Learn to hate
by devils-biatch99
Summary: prominent Auror, Draco Malfoy, has it all. But for a man addicted to the dark and dangerous side of sexual attraction it isn’t enough. He goes from affair to affair, seducing his grateful female clients, risking his charmed life-style. Then his luck run
1. Default Chapter

Learn to hate  
  
Summary- prominent Auror, Draco Malfoy, has it all. But for a man addicted to the dark and dangerous side of sexual attraction it isn't enough. He goes from affair to affair, seducing his grateful female clients, risking his charmed life-style. Then his luck runs out.  
  
Draco Malfoy, thirty years old, married, successful, sexy and the father of two healthy energetic play school age children, and right nor thoroughly disenchanted and bored with his lot, surveyed the other occupants of the ballroom of Faro's Daughters- presently the scene of his brother in law's wedding reception- with cynical contempt.  
  
Marion, the bride and the most dominant of the females of the Weasley clan, was laughing into the handsome face of her new husband, Percy Weasley, while various members of the Weasley clan looked on in what to Draco was grotesquely irritating sentimentality. Beside them stood Fred and George Weasley,  
  
Twins!  
  
Twins ran through the genealogical history of the Weasley family. His own step-father was the younger one of one pair and his grandfather, Bastian Weasley, the lone survivor of another.  
  
Twins!  
  
Draco was eternally grateful to his parents for the fact that his life had not been overshadowed; that he had not been overshadowed by another half, another self, threatening his position of sole supremacy, and it was about the only thing he was grateful to them for.  
  
As he glanced around the large room, Draco was coolly amused to observe the way so many of his relatives failed to meet his gaze. They didn't like him very much, but he didn't care. Why should he? Having people like him had never been one of Draco's ambitions.  
  
The brand new Bentley Turbo aero-dynamic convertible car he was currently driving, his position as a partner in one of London's most prestigious sets of Auror chambers; they hadn't been acquired because people liked him. To be one of London's foremost Auror's had been Draco's driving goal in life, ever since he had been old enough to learn from his father a.k.a. Lucius the mole, just what the word Auror meant.  
  
Draco's uncle Jasper in law, his father in law's twin brother, had once been destined for that same golden future, but Uncle Jasper had failed to make it. There had been a time, too, when Draco had feared he too may fail, when despite all the promises he had made with himself, all the tension over the Great War, all the promises he had made to his father, he might, through no fault of his own, have the prize he so desperately wanted snatched from him at the last minute. But he had found a way to turn the situation to his own advantage, to show those who had tried to bring him down just how foolish they had been.  
  
He glanced across the room to where his wife, Virginia, was sitting with her mother and her grandfathers sister, Germana.  
  
While not one of his female cousins of his own generation, nor the wives of his male ones, could ever be said to be the kind of high profile trophy wives that their partners could take satisfaction in flaunting beneath the envious eyes of other men, they were certainly attractive enough- very attractive indeed, in fact in the case of Bill's wife Fleur- to underline Virginia's dreary, boring plainness.  
  
Draco's mouth curled cynically as his wife glanced up and saw that he was watching her, in her eyes the look of a rabbit momentarily trapped in the dazzle of a car's headlights, before she quickly looked away from him.  
  
Virginia did, of course, have one redeeming feature as his wife. Her family was extremely wealthy new money and extremely well connected.  
  
'What do you mean, you don't want our baby,' she had faltered in shocked disbelief when she had so humbly and so adoringly brought him the news that she was pregnant with their first child.  
  
'I mean, my oh-so-stupid wife, that I don't want it,' Draco had told her callously. 'The reason I married you was not to procreate another generation of little Weasleys, your brothers can do that.'  
  
'No. then why. why did you marry me?' Virginia had asked him tearfully.  
  
It had amused him to see the dread in her eyes, to feel the fear she was trying so hard to conceal.  
  
'I married you because it was the only way I could get into a decent set of Auror chambers, which thanks to my fathers dabbling into the Dark Arts I didn't have,' Draco had told her cruelly. 'Why so shocked?' he had taunted her. 'Surely you must have guessed.'  
  
'You said you loved me,' Virginia had reminded him painfully.  
  
Draco had thrown back his head and laughed. 'And you believed me. Did you really, Virginia, or were you just so desperate to get a man, to get laid, to get married, that you chose to believe me?  
  
'Get rid of it,' he had instructed her, his glance flicking dispassionately towards her small, round stomach.  
  
Bud Virginia hadn't done as he had demanded. Instead she had defied him, and now there were two noisy, squalling brats to disrupt his life- not that he allowed them to do so.  
  
It had been a positive stroke of genius on his part to encourage his step grand father to become so dependent on Virginia that the old man had insisted that she was the only person he wanted around him.  
  
Persuading Virginia to virtually live full-time in Haslewich, the Cheshire town where her parents had grown up and where her great-grandfather had first begun the Auror practice that her father now ran, had been even easier, a move had left him free to pursue his own life virtually unhindered by the interference and responsibility of two turbulent children and a clinging wife.  
  
Draco felt not the least degree of compunction about the affairs he had enjoyed during his marriage, relationships that in the main, had been conducted with female clients for whom he was acting for when undercover.  
  
It was not unusual for these women- rich, beautiful, spoiled and often either bored or vulnerable- to feel that a relationship with the handsome young Auror who was going to make who ever wronged them part with as much of their fortune or possessions as he could was a justifiable perk of their divorce, as well as an additional small triumph against their enemies.  
  
It was not to be hoped, of course, that they would keep the details of such a delicious piece of vengeance a secret.  
  
Confidences were shared and exchanged with 'girlfriends,' and Draco had very quickly become known as the Auror to have if one was in trouble- and not just because of the wonderful amounts of possessions he managed to wrest from their previously determinedly ungenerous foes.  
  
Even his marriage to Virginia, which initially he had intended should last no longer than the time it took to get himself established, had begun to be a bonus. After all, marriage to Virginia and the existence of two small dependent children meant that all his lovers had to appreciate right from the start of their affair that it could only ever be a temporary thing, that no matter how desirable, how enticing they might be, he as a man of honour could not put his own needs, his own desires, above the security of his children. For their sakes he had to stay married.  
  
'If only there were more men like you.' more than one of his lovers had whispered. 'Your wife is so lucky.'  
  
Draco totally agreed, Virginia was lucky. If he hadn't married her she could have been condemned to a life of being the unmarried daughter.  
  
There was currently a whisper that her father was being considered for the soon-to-be vacant post of Minister of Magic, and it would certainly do his own career no harm at all is that whisper should become a reality.  
  
Draco knew that Virginia's parents didn't particularly care for him, but it didn't worry him. Why should it? His own parents, his own family didn't like him very much, either. And he didn't particularly like them. The only member of any of his family's he had ever felt any real degree of warmth for had been his uncle Jasper, and even that had been tinged with envy because his grandfather doted on Jasper. Draco also felt contempt for Jasper, because for all his grandfather's talk and praise, Jasper had, after all, still only been the senior partner in the family's small-town Auror practice.  
  
Love, the emotion that united and bonded other people, was an alien concept to Draco. He loved himself, of course, but his feelings for others veered from mild contempt through disinterest to outright resentment and deep hostility.  
  
In Draco's eyes, it was not his fault that others didn't like him, it was theirs. Their fault and their loss.  
  
Draco glanced at his watch. He'd give it another half and hour and then he'd leave. Marion had originally wanted to get married on Christmas Eve, but the wedding had actually taken place a bit earlier, primarily because it was the return of Great-aunt Germana and her American husband, Howard, to fly to the States to spend Christmas with German's daughter and her husband.  
  
Great aunt Germana's granddaughter Fleur, and her husband, Bill, were going with them, along with their young daughter.  
  
Several yards away, Fleur Weasley, who had observed the war Draco had looked at poor Ginny, reflected grimly to herself that Draco really was detestable. She had once heard his cousin Olivia remark very succinctly, 'Max is the king of man who, no matter how attractive the woman he's speaking with is, will always be looking over her shoulder to see if he can spot someone even better.'  
  
Poor Ginny, indeed. Fleur didn't know how she could bear to stay in her marriage, but then, of course, there were the children.  
  
She patted her own still-flat stomach with a small, secret smile; her second pregnancy had been confirmed only the previous week.  
  
'I think this time it could be twins,' she had confided to Bill, who had raised his dark eyebrows and asked her dryly, 'Women's intuition?'  
  
'Well, one of us has got to produce a set,' Fleur had pointed out to him, 'and I'm the right age for it now. Mothers in their thirties are more likely to have twins.'  
  
'In their thirties? You are only just thirty,' Bill had reminded her.  
  
'Mmm. I know, and I rather think that these two were conceived on the night of my thirtieth birthday,' she had told him softly.  
  
Bill was one of several children, six boys and one girl. His father Arthur Weasley, and his fathers brother, Hasbreath Weasley, were the senior partners, now retired, in the original Aurors' practice in Chester. Over eighty years ago there had been a quarrel between the then youngest son Fenwick Weasley, and his family, and he had broken away from them and gone on to found the Haslewich branch of the Weasley family and firm.  
  
While Bill's brothers and sister and the other Weasley cousins and their Haslewich peers were extremely good friends, Bastian Weasley, the most senior member of the Weasley family in Haslewich, was still obsessed by the family tradition of competitiveness with the members, even if it was now in spirit only.  
  
It had been a burning ambition of Bastian's all his life that initially his eldest son and then, when that had not been possible, his most ambitious grandson, Draco, should achieve the goal that had been withheld from him and be called to the guild.  
  
All through his growing years, Draco had been alternately bribed and coerced by his father to fulfil this goal, his naturally competitive spirit sharpened and fed by his fathers' tales of the injustices suffered by the Malfoy's and the need to restore the family pride by proving to the world that they weren't the only ones who could boast of reaching the higher echelons of the Auror profession.  
  
When Draco had announced to Ginny's grandfather that he was to join one of London's most prestigious sets of chambers, he had made Bastian Weasley's dearest wish come true.  
  
As Fleur surveyed the Faro's Daughters' ballroom now, she couldn't help remembering the first time she had attended another family occasion- Fred and his twin George's 10th annual year of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, an event to which she, as a stranger then to the family, had been invited by Ron, Bill's younger brother.  
  
Draco had behaved very gallantly towards her then. Too gallantly for a married man, as Bill hadn't hesitated to point out. Conversely, she and Bill had clashed immediately, equally antagonistic towards each other.  
  
She was glad that Percy had brought his wedding forwards from Christmas Eve so that they could all attend. She would have hated to have missed the celebration, but she was looking forward to spending Christmas with her parents and sister as well. Her mother, Severine, would be thrilled when she told her about her pregnancy, and so, too she hoped would Gabriel. A small frown touched her forehead as she thought about her younger sister.  
  
Something was wrong with Gabriel's life at the moment. She knew it, could sense it with that extraordinarily magical bond that made them close.  
  
In a small anteroom just off the ballroom, the youngest members of the Weasley family were having a small party of their own, not so much by design as by accident. From her seat within watching distance of the door, Molly Weasley was keeping a motherly eye on the events, though she knew they could come to no harm.  
  
Who would have thought in such a short space of time that the family would produce so many little ones, a complete new generation.  
  
Liv, her husband's niece and the eldest of his twin brother Lucien's two children, had started it all, and now she and Sherlock, her American husband, had Alec and Austin. Saya, Bastian's half brother Jai's elder son, had Quinn, Merry and Robin from his first marriage and now a baby from his marriage to Brianna, and of course her own daughter, Virginia, had Liam and Jade.  
  
Ginny. Molly could feel her body tensing as she took a quick look at her daughter, who was seated between here and Germana her head bent down. Ginny might seem to the unaware onlooker calm and serene, but Molly had seen the tears sparkling in her eyes several minutes ago and she had known who had been the cause of them.  
  
Even now, after all these years, she still hadn't come to terms with the reality that was her daughters husband, and it hurt her unbearably to know that it was Draco, who was the cause of so much hurt and pain.  
  
She ached to ask her son in law why he behaved the way he did. Why. What it was that motivated him to be the person he was, but she knew that if she even tried to talk to him he would simply giver her that half mocking, half sneering contemptuous little smile of his and shrug his shoulders and walk away.  
  
She had never been able to understand why her daughter had married him, and she knew she never would. She knew, too, that every time she looked at her daughter and witnessed the pain her marriage was causing her, she was overwhelmed by guilt and despair.  
  
Ginny was everything that she, Molly, could have wanted in a daughter, and as such she was dearly loved by her, but Molly would had to have had far less intelligence than she did have to be able to convince herself that Ginny was the kind of wife that Draco should have gone for.  
  
Draco thrived on opposition, challenge, aggression. Draco wanted most what he could have least and poor Virginia just wasn't. just couldn't. Poor Virginia!  
  
At her mother's side, Virginia Weasley had a pretty fair idea just what Molly was thinking and she couldn't blame her in the least.  
  
Draco had only arrived home at Queensmead this morning, the lovely old house that belonged to her grandfather and where Virginia and the children had now virtually made their permanent home, with only an hour to spare before the wedding began, having assured Virginia that he would be there early the previous evening. Not an auspicious start, and to make matters even worse, Liam was going through a belligerent and rather touchingly possessive phase where his mother was concerned. Unlike his father, Liam didn't seem to realize that her looks made it a visible implausibility that any man could ever feel possessively jealous about her- and he had glowered at Draco when he had arrived, refusing to leave her side to go to his father.  
  
In private Virginia knew that Draco couldn't care less whether the children ignored him or not. In fact if the truth were known, the less he had to do with them, the happier he was. After all, he had never wanted either of them.  
  
But in public, it was different. In public, in front of his grandfather and others, his children had to be seen to love their father, which Liam, quite plainly at the moment, did not. And then Jade had been sick. Not, fortunately, badly enough to harm her dress, but certainly enough to cause the kind of delay that had Draco swearing under his breath and telling Virginia with chilling cruelty that she was as useless as a mother as she was a wife.  
  
Ginny knew what the true cause of his anger was, of course. It was a woman. It had to be. She knew the signs far too well now not to recognize them. Draco had left a woman behind in London whom he would far rather be with. And no doubt she was the reason he had not come down to Haslewich last night as they had agreed.  
  
Ginny told herself that his infidelity didn't have the power to hurt her anymore, but deep down inside she knew that it wasn't true.  
  
Ginny knew that her mother and the rest of her family felt very sorry for her. She could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voices, and sometimes, when she looked at her cousins and their wives with their families and saw they love they shared, she felt positively rent with pain for all that she was missing out on, although she tried to tell herself stoically that what you never had you never missed. And he did have an excuse for his behaviour. He had certainly never been loved as a child as a child longed to be. His mother was a peer's daughter who had always given her the impression that she considered her marriage, and with it her husband and her daughter in law, as somehow slightly beneath her. She held herself slightly separate from them and spent most of her time on a round of visits to a variety of relatives while his father, the ever known Lucius Malfoy, the leader of the Death Eaters, spent his time working for Voldemort's cause.  
  
Draco, their only child, had not featured very significantly in his parents' lives. Except of course as a symbol of his fathers virility. Now that he was married she hardly saw them at all, and to come to Haslewich and discover that there was not just a home waiting for her with Virginia's grandfather, but also a role to play where she was really genuinely needed had for a time at least, been a comforting salve on the open wound of her destructive marriage.  
  
Virginia was, by nature and instinct, one of life's carers, and when other people grimaced over her grandfather's tetchiness, she simply smiled and explained gently that it was the pain he suffered in his damaged joints that caused him to be so irascible.  
  
'Ginny, you are a saint,' she had been told more than once by her grateful relatives, but she wasn't, of course, she was simply a woman- a woman who right now longed with the most ridiculous intensity to be the kind of woman who a man might look at the way Percy Weasley was looking at his wife, Marion Weasley, with love, with pride, with desire. with all the things Virginia had once mistakenly and tragically convinced herself she had seen in Draco's eyes when he looked at her, but which had simply been mocking and contemptuous deceits designed to conceal his real feelings from her.  
  
Draco had married her for one reason and one reason only, as he had told her many, many times in the years since their wedding, and that reason had been his relentless ambition to be called to the Ministry's top Aurors; an ambition that she had discovered he might never have fulfilled without her family's help.  
  
'Ginny, why do you put up with him? Why on earth don't you divorce him?' Hermione had asked her impatiently one Christmas when both of them had sat and watched Draco flirting openly and very obviously with a pretty young woman.  
  
Virginia had simply shaken her head, unable to explain to Hermione why she remained married to Draco. How could she when she couldn't really explain it herself? All she could have said was that here at Haslewich she felt safe and secure. wanted and needed.  
  
Hence, while, she had a task to complete, she felt able to side-line the issue of her marriage, to pretend to herself, while Draco was away in London and she was here, that it was not, after all, as bad as it might seem to others.  
  
The truth was, Virginia suspected that she didn't divorce Draco because she was afraid of what her life might be, not so much without him as without sole possession of her children. It was pathetic of her, she knew, but it wasn't just for herself that she was being what others would see as weak. There were the children to be considered as well.  
  
In Haslewich they were part of a large and loving interlinked family network where they had a luxury not afforded to many modern children, the luxury of growing up surrounded by their extended family- aunts, uncles, cousins. The Weasley family was part of this area of Cheshire, and Virginia desperately wanted to give her children a gift that she considered more priceless than anything else; the gift of security, of knowing they had a special place in their own special world.  
  
'But surely if you lived in London, the children would be able to see much more of their father,' one recent acquaintance had commented to her not long ago.  
  
Virginia had bent her neat head over the buttons she was fastening on Liam's coat so that her hair felt forward, concealing her expression as she had responded in a muffled voice, 'Draco's work keeps him very busy. He works late most evenings.'  
  
Luckily the other woman hadn't pressed the subject, but as she ushered Liam towards the path that cut across behind the building where he attended play school classes three mornings a week- Virginia refused to use the car unless she absolutely had to, one of the pleasures of living in a small country town was surely that one could walk almost everywhere- Virginia had felt acutely self conscious. Within the family it was accepted that Draco remained in London supposedly mostly during the working week, but in reality for much longer stretched of time than that, so that she and the children could often go weeks if not months on end without really seeing him.  
  
Although her marriage was subject that she never discussed- with anyone- Virginia knew that her family had to be aware that it wasn't merely necessity that kept Draco away.  
  
Sometimes she was sorely tempted to confide in Molly, her mother, but the natural reticence and quiet pride that were so much a part of her gentle nature always stopped her, and what, after all, could Molly do? Command Draco to love her and the children; command him to.  
  
Stop it, Virginia hastily warned herself, willing her eyes not to fill with tears.  
  
Draco was already in a foul-enough mood without her making things worse. He might not be the kind of man who would ever physically abuse either his wife or his children, but his silent contempt and his hostility towards them were sometimes so tangible that Virginia felt she could almost smell the dark, bitter miasma of them in the air of a room even after he had left it.  
  
The first thing she always did after his brief visits to Queeensmead was to go round and open all the windows and to breathe lungful of clean, healing fresh air.  
  
'Where's that husband of yours?' she remembered Bastian asking her fretfully recently as he shifted his weight from his bad hip to his good one. The healer had warned him the last time he had gone for a check-up that there was a strong possibility that he might have to have a second hip operation to offset the wear and tear caused to his good hip by him favouring it to ease the pain in his 'bad' one.  
  
Predictably he had erupted in a tirade of angry refusal to accept what the healer was telling him, and it had taken Virginia several days to get him properly calmed down again.  
  
But despite his irascibility and his impatience, she genuinely liked him. There was a very kind, caring side to him, an old fashioned protective maleness that she knew some of the younger female members of his family considered to be irritating, but which she personally found rather endearing.  
  
'I do not know how you put up with him,' Liv had told her vehemently only the previous week. She had called to see Virginia, bringing with her Christmas presents for Liam and Jade, and she brought her two small daughters, Austin and Alec, with her.  
  
'Daughters! Sons, that's what this family needs,' her grandfather had sniffed disparagingly when she had taken the girls in to see him. 'It's just as well we've got young Liam here,' he had added proudly as he gazed fondly at his great grandson.  
  
'I will not have him making my girls feel that they are in any way inferior to boys,' Liv had fumed later in the kitchen to Ginny as they drank their coffee.  
  
'He doesn't mean anything by it,' Ginny had tried to comfort her, pushing the plate of Christmas biscuits she had baked that morning towards Liv as she spoke.  
  
'Oh, yes he does,' Liv had told her darkly as she munched one of them, 'and I should know. After all, I heard enough of it when I was growing up. He never stopped making me feel. reminding me. that as a girl I could never match up to Bill, and my father was just as bad. Sometimes I used to wish that Bill had been my father's child, and that Uncle Arthur had been my father.'  
  
'Molly's told me how dreadfully Gramps spoiled Bill when he was growing up,' Ginny remarked quietly.  
  
'Spoiled him is exactly right,' Liv had agreed forthrightly, momentarily obviously forgetting that Ginny was Draco's wife. 'Anything Bill wanted he got, and Gramps was forever boasting about him to everyone. Whenever we had a get together with the lot, there was Gramps singing Bill's praises, and woe betide anyone who tried to argue with him.  
  
'I laughed till tears crawled down my face when Bill announced he was to be a curse breaker. But then you married Draco, and then the world revolved around his son in law.'  
  
'Yes,' Virginia had agreed. She knew Liv far too well to suspect her of any kind of malice or unkindness. She was simply stating what she saw as the facts, and her opinions were quite naturally tainted by her dislike of Draco. She had always been completely open with Virginia about her feelings for her Draco, explaining that they went back a long way, and that much as she liked Ginny herself, she doubted that she could ever pretend to feel anything other than wary acceptance of Draco.  
  
Did Liv know that the only reason Draco had married her was to further his career? Virginia hoped not. Liv was basically very kind hearted and Virginia knew she would never have deliberately hurt her by raising the subject if she had known the whole truth.  
  
'Gramps is going to be putting an awful lot of pressure on Liam to follow in Draco's footsteps,' she started to warn Ginny, but Ginny stopped her, shaking her head calmly.  
  
'Liam isn't like Draco,' she told Liv quietly. 'I think if he takes after anyone it Arthur, and I suspect that if he does become an Auror, he will be quite happy to follow Arthur into the Haslewich practice.  
  
'To be truthful, I think if any of the babes are destined to be real high flyers, its going to be your Austin.'  
  
Liv had smiled lovingly at her eldest daughter.  
  
'She is very quick and determined,' she had agreed, 'but life doesn't always turn out as we expect it to. Look at Charlie. We all thought he was going to be a famous Quidditch player, and look at him now. A dragon carer. Now its Ron, whom all of us have always though of as the quiet brother, the one who would become a teacher, who looks as though he's going to carve out a Quidditch career for himself.'  
  
Liv didn't say anything to her about the fact that she, Ginny seemed to have no interest in anything outside her domestic life and her children, she noticed rawly.  
  
'Mmm. these cookies are delicious,' Liv had suddenly confounded her by saying. She added, 'You could cook professionally Ginny. I'm not surprised that you manage to coax Gramps into eating so well.'  
  
Ginny had said nothing, just as she said nothing about the kitchen cupboards that were brimming with the fruits of her labours over the long summer and autumn- literally. She enjoyed gardening as well as cooking, and with Germana's expert tuition and assistance when she was in Haslewich, Ginny had resurrected Queensmead's neglected kitchen garden with its espaliered fruit trees and its newly repaired glass house along its south facing wall. She was presently cosseting the peach tree that had been Germana's and Molly's birthday present to her and that she hoped might bear fruit next summer.  
  
Since moving to Queensmead, she had quietly and gently set about bringing the old house back to life- dusty rooms had been cleaned and repainted, furniture mended and waxed. She had even made the Apparition north to Scotland to persuade her maternal grandparents to part with some of the sturdy country furniture not deemed grand enough for the lofty, elegant rooms of their Scottish castle and currently housed in its attics, but which she had known immediately would be perfectly at home at Queensmead.  
  
Guy Cooke, the local antique dealer with whom Molly had once been in partnership, had whistled in soundless admiration when he had visited Queensmead and been shown the newly revamped and furnished rooms.  
  
'Very nice,' he had told Ginny appreciatively. 'Too many people make the mistake of furnishing houses like Queensmead with antiques that are far too grand and out of place, or even worse, buying replicas, but these. you've definitely got an eye Ginny.'  
  
'It helps having grandparents with attics full of furniture,' Ginny had laughed as Guy turned to examine the heavy linen curtains she had hung in one of the rooms.  
  
'Wonderful,' he had told her, shaking his head. 'You can't buy this stuff now for love nor money. Where?'  
  
'My great- great- grandmother had Irish connections,' Ginny had told him mock solemnly. 'I found it.'  
  
'I know, in the attics,' Guy had supplied for her.  
  
'Well, not exactly,' Ginny had laughed again. One of her third cousins had apparently been aggrieved to discover that Ginny had made off with the linen from one of the many spare bedrooms, having earn-marked it for some expensive decorating project herself.  
  
'I'm so looking forward to Christmas this year,' Molly suddenly said to her. 'You've done wonders with Queensmead, Ginny, it's going to make the most wonderful venue for the family get together.'  
  
'Mmm. Queensmead is a lovely home,' Ginny agreed.  
  
'Arthur's had a word with Bran,' Molly told her, 'and he's arranged for the tree to be delivered the day after tomorrow. I'll come round if you like and give you a hand decorating it.'  
  
'Yes, please,' Ginny accepted with alacrity. The Christmas tree that was to go in Queensmead's comfortably sized entrance hall was coming from the estate of Bran T. Thomas, the Minister of Wizard and Muggle connections and a close friend of the family. Elderly and living on his own, he had been invited to join the family for Christmas dinner. Giinny like him. He had a wonderful fund of stories about the area and talked so movingly about his late wife that Ginny often found her eye filling with tears as she listened to him.  
  
'I think Marion is getting ready to leave,' Molly warned her daughter now, disturbing Ginny from her reverie.  
  
As she glanced towards her newly married couple, Ginny's heart suddenly missed a beat. They looked so happy, so much in love, Percy looking tenderly down into Marion's upturned face and then bending to kiss her. As they reluctantly broke apart, Ginny could quite plainly see the look of shimmering joy illuminating Marion's face. It wasn't that she begrudged Marion her happiness- how could she? It was just. it was just. Swallowing hard, Ginny looked the other way.  
  
Obligingly Ginny got up and went to separate her own two children from the happy mass playing in the adjacent anteroom.  
  
Liam, who had been a page boy, had conducted herself with aplomb, and Jade had swiftly recovered from the morning's bout of nausea, but they were tiring now as Ginny's experienced maternal eye could tell.  
  
As Fleur, Bill's wife, came to find her own daughter, she grimaced at Virginia and confided, 'I'm not looking forward to a transatlantic port key on top of this.'  
  
'But it will be worth it once you're with your family,' Virginia reminded her.  
  
'Oh heavens, yes,' Fleur agreed feverently.  
  
As Bill came to join her and picked up their small daughter, cradling her tired body in his arms, Fleur couldn't help reflecting the differences between Bill and Draco.  
  
Her Bill was a tender, loving father and an equally loving husband, while Draco might pretend in front of other- especially his grandfather- to be a caring human being, but Fleur could see through that pretence.  
  
Poor Ginny. 


	2. Chapter two

Chapter Two  
  
Could you look me in the eye And tell me that your happy now Would you tell it to my face That I haven't been erased Are you happy now? -Michelle Branch  
  
Poor Ginny. She had heard herself so described so often that sometimes she thought she ought to have been christened thus, Ginny reflected several hours later, unwillingly recalling hearing Fleur whisper the two words under her breath as she had turned to smile at Bill.  
  
Liam and Jade were safely tucked up in bed, their stories read and sleep not very far away.  
  
Bastian had gone to bed protesting that Ginny was fussing unnecessarily and that there was nothing wrong with him, even though it was perfectly obvious that he was in pain. Tiredly Ginny headed for her own bedroom. Supposedly it was the room she shared with Draco on his rare visits home, but in reality. Draco might design to sleep in the large king-size bed alongside her, but for all the intimacy, the love, the natural closeness one might expect to be shared between a married couple, they might just as well have been sleeping in separate beds and at opposite ends of the large house.  
  
On this occasion, though, Draco was not intending to stay the night and had already left for London. Ginny had long since ceased to struggle with the pretence that their marriage was either happy or 'normal,' just as she had ceased to question the fact that Draco was returning to London ostensibly to 'work.'  
  
And the worst thing about the whole horrid situation was not that Draco cared so little for her, but that she cared so much. Too much.  
  
What had happened to the dreams she had once had, the bright shining hopes, the belief that Draco loved her?  
  
Her maternal ears, forever tuned, picked up the sound of a soft cry from Jade's room. Tiredly she slid out of bed. Jade was going through a phase of having bad dreams.  
  
***  
  
Having parked his aero-Bentley at the rear of the smart mews house he had bought with the wedding cheque given to them by Ginny's grandparents, Draco unlocked the front door and headed for the bedroom, dropping his overnight bag on the floor and stretching out full length on the bed as he reached for his wand and conjured up a hologram confidently.  
  
The woman's voice on the other end of the line sounded sleepy and soft.  
  
'Guess who?' Draco asked her, tongue in cheek.  
  
There was a brief silence before she responded.  
  
'Oh, Draco. But I thought! You said you were going to a family wedding and that you'd be staying for the weekend.'  
  
'So, I changed my mind,' Draco told her, laughingly. 'What would you like for breakfast?'  
  
'Breakfast. Oh, Draco. I don't. I can't.'  
  
She sounded more alert now, and Draco could see her sitting up in bed in her Belgravia house, her tawny hair down round her shoulders, her skin honey gold from her recent holiday in Mauritius. He had flown out to join her there for five days.  
  
'Some client conference,' the Auror who had originally instructed him had commented enviously when he had handed Draco Mercedes fax.  
  
'When you're paying for millions, the cost of flying your Auror out for an urgent conference is pretty small beer,' Draco told him carelessly.  
  
Mercedes was the wife of a millionaire, soon-to-be billionare corporate raider. The first thing she had done when she had discovered that he was having an affair with one of her 'friends' was to instruct her assistant that she wanted him to hire Draco as her Auror, the second was to arm herself with as much evidence as she could of her husbands business affairs, including his complex and adventurously artistic interpretation of the tax laws.  
  
Draco had decided appreciatively that she had enough on him to make it a piece of cake for him to send him to Azkaban with a divorce settlement that would make her virtually as comfortably wealthy as his ex as she had been as his wife, and to get him the kind of publicity that would ensure that he maintained his position as the country's foremost Divorce Auror.  
  
'Divorce isn't really the kind of thing we like to specialize in here in chambers,' the most senior member, a QC and once of the country's foremost tax Auror specialists had advised Draco stiffly when he had originally joined them. 'It's not really quite us, if you know what I mean.'  
  
Draco had known exactly what he meant, but he had also been acutely aware of the fact that was only his father in law's name that had got him a place in the chambers at all. He also knew that the only reputation he had then to gain him the clients who would bring him the kind of high profile and even higher income he craved so desperately was one of being unwanted and rejected by his previous 'set,' where he had been allowed to work only as a tenant and on the cases that no one else wanted to deal with.  
  
His new chambers attracted a clientele who wanted and expected only the best barristers whose names and reputations they already knew, and so Draco had seen a niche for himself in the one field where the chambers didn't already have a specialist- matrimonial Aurorism.  
  
That had been several years ago, and now Draco's reputation had grown and his name on a case was likely to strike dread in a wealthy husband about to enter the divorce arena.  
  
The extremely high fees Draco charged for his services weren't the only benefit he earned from his work. Draco had quickly and cynically discovered that newly divorced and about to be divorced women very often had an appetite for sex and the male attention that went with it, which ensured him a constant turnover of willing bed mates.  
  
One of the main advantages of these relationships, from Draco's point of view, was that they were always relatively brief. While his female clients were going through their divorces, he provided a comforting male shoulder to lean on, someone with whom they could share their problems as well as their beds. But once everything was finalized, he was always able to very quickly and firmly detach himself.  
  
If any of his lovers showed a tendency to cling and become possessive, he suddenly became far too busy with 'work' to be able to take their messages- they soon got the drift. A new client, a new lover- it was time for Draco to move on.  
  
The affair with Mercedes, because of the extremely complex nature of her husbands financial affairs and the huge amount of money potentially involved, had lasted considerably longer than usual, and as yet Mercedes's husband had not been served with any divorce papers.  
  
'I've got at least two friends who got damn all out of their ex's,' Mercedes had told Draco, showing him her expensive dental charm work in a very sharp, foxy smile.  
  
'I have no intention of allowing that to happen to me. Here is a list of the assets I intend to make a claim on,' she had told Draco, handing him an impressively long typed schedule.  
  
They had been lovers for more than two months, and Draco had to admit that he was impressed. He doubted that Mercedes had a single ounce of emotional vulnerability in her entire make-up. She was one of the most sexually demanding women he had ever had, abandoning herself completely and utterly satisfied. But once she was, she was immediately and instantly back in control; her mind, her brain, were as sharp and dangerous as an alligator's teeth.  
  
Her husband would be lucky to escape with even half of his fortune intact, Draco had decided as he listened to her plans for using her knowledge of his tax affairs to blackmail him into settling and giving her what she wanted.  
  
'I don't intend to file for divorce until after this new deal he's working on has gone through,' she had told Draco candidly. 'It's worth almost five hundred million, and I want to make sure I get my share of it.'  
  
'Look. I . I can't talk now,' he heard her saying quickly to him now. 'I'll meet you tomorrow. I'll come round to your place.'  
  
She had cut off the connection herself before Draco could object, leaving him angrily aware of his sexual frustration and even more importantly, with a sharp sense of unease.  
  
It was going on for two o'clock in the morning, but he felt too restless for sleep. Draco's instinct for survival was very acute and very finely tuned. It had to be. As his grandfather in law's favourite he had spent his growing years fighting off any potential claims on his position from his cousins and family, and as a young adult he had to strive to maintain that position.  
  
Now that he was married to Virginia, her grandfather's favour didn't matter in quite the same way. Virginia's own trust funds were worth considerably in excess of her grandfather's assets, but it wasn't just the desire for wealth that drove Draco. He had another need that in its way was just as intense, and that need was to stand apart from his peers, to set himself above them, to be envied by them. Friendship, affection, love, none of these interested Draco nor mattered to him.  
  
Supremacy, that was what Draco craved. Supremacy and the security that came with it. The supremacy of being the best divorce Auror, the best head of chambers in the best set of chambers. In Draco's opinion, there were two ways to gain these goals. The first was through merit and skill, the second, sometimes the more subtle- was an underhanded method of gaining power, which made its acquisition all the sweeter. To emerge as top dog was important when others had openly derided one's fitness for such a role.  
  
It had amused him recently to bump into Jacob Wright, the barrister who had beaten him on a vacancy they had both applied for in his last set of chambers and who had none too subtly crowed his victory over him.  
  
Draco had invited Jacob to join him for a drink and over it had encouraged him to talk about himself. He had learned that Jacob had married somebody from the country set the lower echelons of the upper classes of whose acquaintanceship he had once boasted to Draco.  
  
His wife, to judge from the photograph he had shown Draco, was the plain Hufflepuff, horsy type, and no, they had no children as yet. but they were trying. His dream, it turned out, was to buy himself a small country house.  
  
'But they're so damned expensive, old chap, and Lexy's wretched horses cost the earth to keep.'  
  
Draco had smiled and casually mentioned his own two children. Ginny's grandparents' family seat was also dropped into the conversation along with references to its history and its décor; not too much, just enough to ensure that Jacob realized that he, Draco, was living the life-style that the other man so desperately wanted, that he had fathered the children that Jacob so far had not.  
  
And sweetest of all had been when he had given him a lift home in his new aero-Bentley, to coolly refuse the invitation extended for him and Ginny to join Jacob and his wife for supper one evening.'  
  
'Fraid no can do, old chap,' Draco had told him, giving him his crocodile smile. 'We're pretty fully booked right now.'  
  
Revenge indeed.  
  
Draco couldn't really remember when he had first discovered this power he had within himself to hurt others. What he could remember though, was the sickening sense of anger and fear he had felt when he had once overhead his father and uncle Tarquin talking about him.  
  
He had been about ten at the time and already feeling the effects of Voldemort's rise to power on his relationship with his parents. Draco had never been the kind of child who liked being held or touched. Even before he could walk he had wriggled out of the reach of adults who would have picked him up and fussed over him, resenting, too his cousin Wolfsheim's challenging presence in the arena of his life. Woolfsheim, who was always cuddling up to Narcissa. Woolfsheim, whom his mother seemed to like more than she liked him.  
  
'You've got a fine boy there,' he could remember his uncle Tarquin say enviously to his father. 'The old man thinks I'm letting the side down by not giving him a grandson. Mind you, I've got to say, Lucius, that you and Narcissa don't seem to realize just how lucky you are.  
  
'If Draco was mine. Perhaps he should have been mine,' Tarquin said very softly. 'Dad certainly seems to think so. He says that Draco is far more like me than you. You know, Lucius, sometimes it seems to me that you and Narcissa don't like your son very much.'  
  
The two men had moved out of earshot before Draco could hear anymore. What had his uncle Tarquin meant? Why didn't his parents like him?  
  
Deliberately Draco had begun to test them anxious to discover if what his uncle Tarquin had said was the truth.  
  
He asked for a new broom and he was told he couldn't have one, but they bought Wolfsheim a new one for their birthday.  
  
Draco had 'borrowed' it, and when it had 'accidentally' been pushed under the wheels of a delivery van and smashed, he had told his stern, grave-eyed father that he hadn't meant to push the broom, he had just let go of it at the wrong time.  
  
His sharp eyes began to notice how much more time his mother spent with Wolfsheim than she did with him, how much more fuss she made of Wolfsheim.  
  
He told her that he didn't want her to see him off at the platform for Hogwarts any more that he was going to ask his grandfather to tell his uncle Tarquin to take him. This was despite the fact that more often than not it was Narcissa who saw off Wolfsheim to Hogwarts, Tarquin being far too self-engrossed to consider doing anything so mundane as the school run.  
  
Draco began to listen keenly to the way his grandfather compared his two sons, praising Tarquin and speaking contemptuously of Draco's own father, Lucius. His father, Draco had discovered was a man to be despised and ignored. His grandfather and his uncle Tarquin became the pivotal male role models in his life. To cloak his childish fear of his parents' rejection of him, he began to cultivate a protective wall of indifference to any kind of adult emotion and at the same time he started to learn how to manipulate it to gain his own ends.  
  
In much the same way he had learned to distrust his parents- his father might speak of chastising him out of love for him, but Draco knew better: his father did not love him, his father did not like him. Draco had heard his uncle Tarquin saying so- so Draco also learned to distrust and alienate his peers. Better to protect himself by cultivating and inciting their antagonism than to risk the pain of being rejected by them.  
  
Now, twenty odd years down the line, if anyone had suggested to Draco that it was out of the seeds of his extreme emotional sensitivity and vulnerability as a child that his adult persona had grown, he would have laughed at them in cynical mockery.  
  
He was as he was; he liked being as he was, and for those who didn't like it or him- then too bad!  
  
It irritated him that Mercedes had put him off instead of inviting him to go straight round, as he had expected her to do.  
  
He had been looking forward to the relief he knew that having sex with her would have brought him; not just for his sexual desire but also from the anger and sense of ill-usage that being with his family always caused him.  
  
Virginia, with her pathetic humility and eternal self sacrificing; her parents with their well-mannered 'niceness'; her cousin Liv with her smug self-satisfaction; Bill with his arrogant superiority; and Ron, the perfect father and husband. God, but they all irritated the hell out of him. He knew how much they disapproved of him. disliked him. How sorry they felt for 'poor Ginny,' how they talked about him behind his back, but he was the one whose name was beginning to appear with flattering regularity in the social columns; he was the one who never lacked a willing sexual partner- a variety of willing sexual partners. Well at least not normally!  
  
Tomorrow he would have to punish Mercedes a little for tonight, to point out to her that he had virtually walked out on a family gathering just to be able to spend the night with her- didn't matter that he would have left, anyway, she wasn't going to know that. Yes, just a small cooling off on his part; a discreet hint of withdrawal should be more than enough to make her come running, eager to appease him.  
  
He had a meeting in chambers to attend in the afternoon, which would give him an excuse to cut short the time he spent with her further reinforcing and underlining the stance he intended to take with her. It was their final chambers meeting before they closed down their office for the Christmas and New Year period.  
  
Apart from Mercedes proposed divorce, Draco had no other major work currently in progress but that did not concern him too much. Early spring was always a good time for new briefs the forced conviviality and intimacy of the winter months en famille often proved to be the breaking point for a marriage under strain. Also, Mercedes had already dropped several hints about inviting him to join her when she went skiing. Draco had no particular love of either the sport or the cold, but he had to admit that the thought of Aspen and its social life, its socialites, was extremely tempting.  
  
He would tell Ginny that it was business, of course. Getting off the bed, he started to strip off his clothes before heading to the shower.  
  
Like virtually all other male members of his family, Draco was a stunningly sexy man. Tall, broad shouldered, with a naturally well-muscled torso, he shared his father's blonde hair and very masculine good looks. However, in Draco they possessed a certain most magnetic intensity that one of his smitten victims had once described as making her completely spellbound, like standing in the path of a Voldemort, knowing it had the potential to destroy you and yet being so hyped up on the mixture of adrenaline-induced excitement and fear that knowledge produced that you simply couldn't move out of its way.  
  
'It's that look of cold ruthlessness in his eyes,' she had continued, shivering sensually. 'You just know, the moment you look at him, that he doesn't give a damn about you or your emotions, but somehow you just can't help yourself.'  
  
There was a sharp ache in Draco's body, which he knew from experience could only be alleviated by sex. He smiled grimly to himself as he turned on the shower. He should, after all, have taken Ginny to bed before he left Haslewich. Although he would never have told her so, despite her lack of self-esteem and her plainness, there was about Ginny a very rich vein of sexual warmth and generosity, femininity, a womanless that Draco knew perfectly well most men would have found extremely alluring, all the more so because her own unawareness of it meant that it would be a secret that only a lover would have access to just only as one lover would have access to her body.  
  
Ginny had been a virgin when he had taken her to bed, inexperienced and unknowing, untutored, but her body had surrounded him with softness, a warmth as instinctive and natural as her protective mother love for her children.  
  
She didn't receive him with that same innocent generosity and warmth any more, of course. On the rare occasions when they did have sex, he could feel how much she resented his ability to arouse her and how hard she strived to resist her physical desire for him. It amused Draco to let her. He knew he could make love to her more often and easily turn her resistance into molten liquid and acceptance and desire, but what was the point? The last think he wanted was for Ginny to be sexually demanding or equally possessive.  
  
He showered himself briskly, then stepped out of cubicle, smoothing his dark, wet hair back sleekly off his face as he reached for a towel.  
  
If he was going to go to Aspen he would need to buy himself some suitable clothes. He had read that a lot of the Hollywood set went there for the season. He started to smile as he rubbed his body dry and then padded naked across to his bed.  
  
*  
  
Draco was going through some paperwork when he heard the front doorbell ring. On his way to answer it he quickly checked his appearance in the hallway mirror. He was wearing the expensive after-shave that Mercedes had given him and the Turnbull and Asser shirt, which had been another present from her. The gold cuff links had been a gift from another grateful client. He glanced at his watch, a Rolex that Ginny had given him as a wedding present. Mercedes was earlier than he'd expected her. Well, she was still going to have to make due reparation for last night and wait a little for her sex. Yes, and plead with him for it, too!  
  
Draco opened the door.  
  
'Malfoy, may I come in?'  
  
Without waiting for Draco's assent, Mercedes husband stepped determinedly into the hallway.  
  
Draco had met him on only one previous occasion at a dinner party given by a friend of Mercedes to which he had been invited.  
  
Although not as tall as Draco and certainly a good twenty years older, Griffin Burton nevertheless possessed that aura of power and forcefulness common to most entrepreneurial successful men. He might not walk with a deliberate swagger nor verbally boast of his achievements or his wealth, but he most definitely had about him that air that warned other males that he considered himself to be their superior, and as he eyeballed Draco with cold aggression as he marched past him, Draco was immediately and acutely aware of a relentless dislike he could feel emanating from him.  
  
To give Draco his due, though, apart from a small betraying distortion of his pupils and a reactive tensing of his muscles, he gave no other sign that his visitor was not the person he expected to see, even managing a passably plausible, polished wave of his hand in the direction of his sitting room as he invited, 'Griffin. Good to see you, old man. What can I do for you.?'  
  
On the verge of walking into the sitting room, Griffin Burton turned round and thoroughly scrutinized Draco.  
  
'I'll say this for you Malfoy, you've got nerve,' he commented tersely. 'I'm a very busy man and I don't have time to play verbal games. Mercedes had told me what's been going on and.'  
  
'Ah. Good.' Draco cut in on him smoothly. 'I did counsel her to tell you that she wanted a divorce. These things are always better when the two parties concerned discuss them as adults, and-'  
  
'Better for the bank balances of their Aurors, yes,' Griffin Burton cut him off acidly, 'but let's not get side-tracked. It isn't your professional relationship with my wife I'm here to discuss.' He paused meaningfully. 'I do know, like I said, what's been going on. A friend tipped me off. Apparently you've got quite a reputation for bedding your female clients.'  
  
Draco gave a small shrug. 'When a marriage is breaking down, people become emotionally-'  
  
'Vulnerable,' griffin Burton supplied darkly before Draco could finish. 'But it's hardly professional behaviour to use that vulnerability against them, is it, and I should have thought that a man in your position would have to be very careful about guarding his professional reputation. After all, that's really what an Auror has to sell, isn't it? His reputation is his product. Unless, of course, you've decided that it's more financially profitable for you to trade your reputation in the bedroom rather than the workroom. Rumour does have it, of course that it wasn't so much your legal skills or qualifications that got you into your chambers in the first place. Does your wife know that you regularly bed your female clients?'  
  
'It's a very pleasant bonus to my work, ' Draco acknowledged with a taunting smile and a small shrug, 'and I cant deny that it is a perk that I don't find very enjoyable. after all, what normal heterosexual man would not?'  
  
It was one of Draco's greatest assets that he possessed a remarkable gift for turning the tables on his opponents and sending back the arrows they fired at him with devastating speed and accuracy, and he could see from the betraying narrowing of Griffin Burton's eyes and the hard edge of colour seeping up under his skin that he had succeeded in getting him on his guard.  
  
'In your shoes, I'd be rather careful about what I admit to,' he warned Draco. 'I doubt very much you'd enjoy being on the other side of a lawsuit.'  
  
'No, I wouldn't,' Draco agreed, and added urbanely, 'but then I doubt that very men would like to stand up in court and admit that their wives preferred me as a lover. Which reminds me, since I am acting for your wife in the subject of divorce, I really should advise you that it is quite unethical for you to approach me.'  
  
'There isn't going to be a divorce.'  
  
Draco stared at him in disbelief.  
  
'Mercedes and I have had a little talk,' Griffin Burton told him with heavy irony, 'and we've decided that we're going to give our marriage a second chance. I think that what Mercedes really needs is to be a mother. A woman needs a child, children, and they say, don't they, that the conception and birth of a child cement a couple more closely together than anything else. You've got children, haven't you?'  
  
He gave Draco a challenging look.  
  
'Divorce can be an extremely expensive and messy business, and as Mercedes now agrees, it makes sense for the two of us to stay together. Oh, and by the way, there's no point in you trying to get in touch with her. She Portkeyed out of New York this morning.'  
  
'I hope I've made myself understood,' he told Draco as he turned around and opened the door, 'but then, I know you'll have got my drift, wont you Malfoy.'  
  
As Draco automatically followed him to the front door, the older man continued with obvious enjoyment, 'Oh, and by the way, perhaps I'd better warn you, I've had a word with the senior partner in your chambers, alerting him to certain facts I felt he should know. After all, a chamber like yours trades on its reputation, and anything that might damage that reputation has to be very swiftly and mercilessly dealt with, doesn't it. rather like anything that might threaten a man's marriage or his financial status.  
  
'It's the mark of an intelligent man, I believe, to act quickly and decisively to protect what he values.'  
  
Draco said nothing. He didn't need to. He knew exactly what Griffin Burton was saying to him. He had somehow or other persuaded Mercedes not to go ahead with her divorce because he had no intention of allowing her to profit financially from her marriage to him. Simpler and far more financially expeditious to remain married to her. But it was his remark about his own professional status that had alarmed Draco the most, especially that comment he had made about speaking with the head of his chambers.  
  
Although technically Draco was his own boss and none of the other members had any kind of jurisdiction over his actions or his morals- in practice. Well, he would soon find out, since no doubt the subject would be raised at his afternoons meeting, if it was going to be raised.  
  
'Hell and damnation,' he muttered grimly as he consigned Mercedes to the past and the long list of his ex-lovers an hour later as he left his mews house en route to the old fashioned set of chambers in the Inns of Court where the high status of their address more than compensated for the cramped office that Draco occupied.  
  
The senior partner's office was, quite naturally, the most luxurious: large, elegantly furnished, reeking of that unmistakably indefinable aura of old money, class and power, and Draco could never walk into it without coveting it and everything that went with it. Already he had promised himself that one day it would be his. 


	3. Chapter three

Chapter Three  
  
'Ah, Draco, there you are.'  
  
As Harold Cavendish, the senior partner, gave him his benign smile and waved him into a chair, Draco stiffened warily when he realized that he was the last to join the meeting.  
  
As the meeting followed its normal and predictable course, Draco allowed himself to relax a little and mentally began to run over in his mind who would make the most suitable replacement in his bed.  
  
When the meeting was over, Draco got up to leave, then froze as the senior partner placed a restraining hand on his arm and told him quietly, 'Er, no, Draco. I'd like you to stay. There's something we need to discuss.'  
  
Harold Cavendish waited until the others had gone before beginning to speak. Draco might not be very popular in chambers and Virginia's father might have had to put pressure on them to take Draco on, but there was no doubt whatsoever about the effect he, and his brand of blonde, smooth, good looks had on their female clientele. It wasn't just his own business that Draco had increased while he had been with them, as Harold himself was keenly aware.  
  
Draco always reminded him of a particular breed of German dog, all sleek good looks and power on the outside, but inwardly possessed of an unreliably vicious streak that, when provoked, could be extremely dangerous. His wife had once told him wryly that it was the thought of harnessing and controlling all the sexual power and uncertainty that was Draco that made women behave so foolishly over him.  
  
'It's the knowledge that they're never quite totally in control of him that is so alluring,' she had told him. 'Draco represents the dark and dangerously exciting side of sexual attraction.'  
  
'Chap's a bounder,' he had objected gruffly. 'Look at the way he treats poor Virginia.'  
  
'Yes, I know,' his wife had agreed ruefully, 'and I'm afraid that just makes him all the more potently alluring.'  
  
Harold had shaken his head, not really understanding what she meant, and he was no closer to understanding now just why so many pretty women were foolish enough to get involved with Draco.  
  
Harold waited until Draco had closed the door before telling him uncomfortably, 'Had a chat with Griffin Burton. He, er.seemed to think there could be something unprofessional going on between you and his wife.'  
  
Draco said nothing.  
  
'He's a very powerful man and we handle a lot of his friends' and contacts' work.'  
  
Draco still said nothing, and Harold found himself fighting against a sense of irritation with him that he wasn't doing the decent thing and making things easier for him.  
  
'Fact is, old chap, that to put it bluntly, Burton isn't too happy about the way.'  
  
'His wife's solicitor was instructing me with regard to her divorce,' Draco interrupted him coolly. 'If Griffin Burton chooses to misinterpret that. relationship. then.'  
  
'Well, yes. Yes, of course,' Harold agreed hurriedly. 'But one has to think not just of one's own reputation, you know, but the reputation of the chambers as a whole as well, and if it gets around that. well. if Burton should get it into his head to put word about. The fact is Draco, that we've discussed the subject among ourselves and Jeremy tells us that you've no major work on at the moment, so we think. that is, we feel. it might be a good idea for you to take some extended leave, say a month or so. just until this unpleasantness blows over, and then.'  
  
Draco stared at him in disbelief.  
  
'You're barring me from the chambers,' he accused. 'You can't do that.'  
  
'No. No. of course not,' Harold agreed hurriedly, 'no such thing. no such thing at all. Fact is, old chap, that all of us need to take a decent break from time to time, and young Ginny would probably appreciate the chance to see a bit more of you.'  
  
Draco looked coldly at him. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him that he didn't give a damn wheat Ginny would appreciate but he managed to restrain himself.  
  
Griffin Burton had certainly managed to put the wind up Harold, he acknowledged bitterly. Pompous old bastard, who was he to tell Draco what he could and couldn't do. Take some extended leave. They couldn't make him, of course, no, no way could they do that, but they could make life pretty unpleasant for him if he refused, Draco admitted angrily. If they chose to do so, they could adopt tactics that ultimately could force him out of chambers, and once that became public knowledge, his chances of continuing to receive not just the fat briefs he had been accustomed to getting, but also the status and accolades that went hand in hand with being a member of such a prestigious set of chambers, would diminish abruptly. There was no way, after the work he had put in, the sacrifices he had made to get where he was, that Draco was ever going to allow himself to be downgraded or side- tracked to somewhere second rate.  
  
As he listened to Harold's pompous meanderings, he told himself fiercely that when the day came when he took over as head of chambers, he would make everyone involved in this pay for what they were doing to him, especially that creep Jeremy Standish, the clerk-cum-office manager, whom Draco knew perfectly well neither liked nor approved of him.  
  
'So you can see, I'm sure, what I mean-' Harold was continuing to waffle uncomfortably '-and like I said, Ginny, I am sure, will.'  
  
Draco had enough, and giving an impatient shrug, he stood up.  
  
'A month.' Draco began, but Harold, suddenly becoming courageous and mindful of his fellow members' urgings and the responsibility he owed them, insisted firmly, 'Two months, Draco. That will give plenty of time for any potential unpleasantness to die down.'  
  
Two months. Draco gave him a hard stare, tempted to argue but sharply aware of how it would make him look if he lost.  
  
God, but Mercedes had truly fucked this up, he fumed half an hour later back in his own small office. And if he had her here right now. he'd. Two months. Just what the hell was he going to do?  
  
As he stared angrily out of his office window, there was a brief rap on the door and Jeremy Standish walked in.  
  
'Ginny was on the phone while you were with Harold.' He told Draco. 'She asked me to remind you that its Liam's nativity play tomorrow afternoon and that her grandfather will be going.'  
  
As Jeremy saw the murderous expression darkening Draco's eyes he couldn't resist adding, mock innocently, 'I'm sure Ginny will be delighted when she knows that you're going to have a couple of months off. You must miss her and the children so much with them living in the country and you living in town.'  
  
Liam's flaming nativity play, that was all he needed, but of course, if he didn't go, her grandfather was bound to start asking awkward questions. Draco still hadn't repaid the loan he had caged off him when he and Ginny had got married- and, in fact, he had no intention of repaying it. Draco had witnessed her grandfather's growing involvement with his own son and already sensed that if he wasn't careful, Liam might begin to usurp his own so-far-unchallenged position as her grandfather's favourite, and there was no way Draco was going to allow that to happen. He was already beginning to think it had been a mistake to allow Ginny to have so much contact with her grandfather and thus easy access to his ear. Not that he had any fear that her grandfather would pay attention to anything she might choose to say. Her grandfather despised women and was an old fashioned chauvinist.  
  
Two flaming months and not even the chance of a fortnight or so in Aspen now to alleviate it. And of course, he would have to tell Ginny, whether he wanted to or not. The last thing he wanted was for her to ring the chambers and find out that he wasn't there- and why. And, in fact, he would have to warn her not to say anything to her parents, either. With any luck he could keep the whole thing pretty quiet. As his brain began to swing into action Draco began to make plans.  
  
Perhaps it might be as well to remind Harold that any hint of his enforced 'holiday' getting out would reflect just as dangerously on the reputation of the rest of the partners as it would on him. Draco might be under no illusion that Griffin Burton's real intention in putting pressure on Harold was to humiliate him, but it would do no harm to overlook that and to point out that on the surface as least, he totally believed that Harold was acting simply out of concern for the chambers as a whole, and since he had no option but to accept the situation, what he needed to do now was to make everyone else believe that taking such a period of leave was his own choice. Perhaps he could earn a few 'brownie' points with Ginny's grandfather and Ginny's family by making out that it was his wife and children that had motivated him, and living in Haslewich at his grandfather's expense would certainly save him money. And of course, he still had women friends in Chester with whom he could alleviate his undoubted boredom.  
  
By the time he had cleared his desk, Draco had almost managed to persuade himself that two months' leave was exactly what he wanted. almost.  
  
*  
  
'The bed's definitely a William and Mary, and when I told him what it was really worth.' Guy Cooke broke off from his description of the furniture he had been asked to value to look keenly at his ex-business partner and to ask gently, 'Molly, what is it, what's wrong? You haven't heard a word of what I've just said.'  
  
'Oh, Guy, I'm sorry,' Molly apologized immediately, giving him a small smile. 'There's nothing really wrong, it's just.'  
  
'Molly, I know when you're happy- and when you're not,' Guy reminded her dryly.  
  
Molly shook her head and admitted, 'It's Nathan, our nephew. His Hogwarts report this time is, well, not very good at all, and Dumbledore has asked to see Arthur about him.'  
  
'What's the problem, do you know?' Guy asked her sympathetically.  
  
'Well, we're not sure, but we think it could possibly be because of Lucien. You know that Nathan and Bill, left school to go and look for Nathan's father.'  
  
'Mmm. Chrissie mentioned it,' Guy acknowledged, referring to his wife, who was in a rather roundabout way, a member of the Weasley family.  
  
'Both Arthur and I have talked to Nathan, and so has Liv, but he seems to have this bee in his bonnet at the moment about Lucien,' Molly told him. 'It's perfectly natural that he should, of course; after all, unlike Liv, he was still really very much a child when Lucien disappeared and he couldn't totally take in the situation. But what's more worrying is that Fleur seems to think that Nathan is actually blaming himself in some way for Lucien's disappearance.'  
  
'Blaming himself.' Guy gave her a sharp look. 'Why on earth should he do that?'  
  
Molly shook her head. 'I don't know. We've both tried to talk to him about it, but he's at that age.' She gave a small sigh. 'We've all always been so close, and we thought he was happy living with us, but now we're both beginning to question whether or not we did the right thing and whether he might ultimately have been happier going to Brighton with Vicky.'  
  
'I shouldn't have any concerns about that,' Guy interrupter her firmly. 'I certainly know who I'd prefer.'  
  
Molly gave him a wan smile. 'Vicky is his mother,' she reminded him. 'Even if Liv says that in her opinion Nathan has been far better off with us.'  
  
'Liv should know, she is Nathan's sister.'  
  
'Yes, I know, and we've been through the whole history of Lucien's disappearance with Nathan and explained to him about the. the problems that had arisen here with Voldemort.'  
  
'It can't have been easy for you,' Guy commented. 'I can still remember just what you and Arthur went though at the time.'  
  
'It was a shock, especially for Arthur when he found out that his twin had been working as a double agent for the Dark Lord. And once Dumbledore and the remainder of the Order had realized we had enough time to turn him around. But now, the Death Eaters are still after him.'  
  
'Liv, Arthur and I have explained to Nathan just what the situation was. While, legally, his father is free to return to this country if he should want to do so, there could be no question of him ever being hunted down by Voldemort's followers.'  
  
'I know it's an issue that we would have had to deal with at one stage, but I just wish that it hadn't manifested itself right now when Nathan is working towards his NEWTs.'  
  
'Mmm. What's Nathan planning to do after, which college?'  
  
'We had talked and thought he wanted to follow family tradition and become an Auror into the practice. There's a very close bond between them, but just recently. I know all teenagers go through a turbulent period, but it seems lately that Nathan really resents us both, but particularly Arthur. His behaviour is hurting Arthur, although he never says anything.'  
  
'Mmm.. I expect he's concerned that he might be related to a second Draco, although.' He stopped when he saw Molly's expression and asked, 'Is that what Arthur thinks, Molly?'  
  
'Not exactly, but he has said recently that he wonders if he's adequate father material. He blames himself for the fact that Percy is as he is. He always has don, and I feel the same way- that we both failed him. Wee can't help wondering if there was something we could have done, something we missed or some.' She paused and shook her head. 'Nathan is nowhere near being like Percy, or Draco for that matter, of course, but Arthur is beginning to feel that somehow or other he must have failed him- Nathan's become so abstracted, so withdrawn just recently, and of course you always worry that. about.'  
  
'Drugs,' Guy supplied shrewdly for her.  
  
'Well. One reads such things,' Molly admitted, 'and although we're only a relatively quiet small country town, we're not that far from Manchester or. and it is Hogwarts break.'  
  
'I know what you're saying,' Guy agreed. Then he added quietly, 'I could put a few feelers out for you if you want me to.'  
  
Guy's family, the Cookes, were involved in every aspect of Haslewich life, including some which were not strictly ethical or honourable.  
  
There was a local story that the Cookes had once included in their number a member of the Gypsy band that had travelled through the area, and it was from this alliance that the family had inherited their strikingly dark tangled curls and good looks.  
  
Molly hesitated. The headmaster had recently alerted all the parents at Hogwarts to the fact that drugs were being sold outside the school gates, despite the Ministry's attempts to put a stop to it. She had no reason to suspect Nathan was taking them, and she was pretty sure that Nathan's recent change in behaviour and attitude was because of his confused emotions about his father.  
  
'I wouldn't want Nathan to think that we didn't trust him,' she told Guy slowly. 'Arthur's worried that Nathan might feel that, as our nephew, eh comes second place to Joss, which isn't the case at all. We love all our children very dearly, although of course in different ways, and because Arthur was himself always aware that in his father's eyes he could never compare to Lucien, Arthur is determined that Nathan won't suffer in the way that he did.'  
  
'It's a very difficult situation,' Guy acknowledged.  
  
'Arthur hates having to take anyone to task,' Molly told him ruefully, 'but it is so important Nathan works hard and gets good grades when he sits his NEWTS.'  
  
'I saw Draco driving into town earlier,' Guy told her.  
  
Molly forced a small smile.  
  
'Oh, did you? Good. Ginny will be pleased. She was afraid that he might miss Liam's first performance in the play school Christmas play,' she told him with a smile.  
  
She wasn't smiling ten minutes later, however, as she hurried back to her car, pitting her body against the cold of the sharp east wind. Ginny had confided in her only a few days ago that she was concerned about Liam's growing antagonism towards his father.  
  
'Gramps think I'm overcoddling Liam, but I've tried to explain to him that it's because he doesn't see very much of Draco and Draco isn't. Draco doesn't.'  
  
Ginny's voice had trailed off, but she hadn't needed to explain. Molly knew exactly what her son in law was and wasn't. Charlie spent more time with, and was far closed, to his small nephew than his father, and Arthur, too, made sure that he gave his small grandson as much attention as he could.  
  
*  
  
Ginny wasn't there when Draco arrived at Queensmead. She had gone out to do some shopping, taking both children with her. The rich sent of greenery and fruit she had used to make the Christmas garlands that decorated the hallway and stairs, as well as the warmth of the seasonal colours against the mellow patina of the panelling, might have caused another man to stop and savour not just the seasonal spirit they evoked but also the quiet skill of the woman who had made them, but Draco gave his wife's handiwork no more than a brief, cursory frown as he headed for the stairs. Before he could climbed them, his grandfather's study door opened and the older man limped painfully into the hallway, his austere expression giving way to a warm smile as he saw his favourite grandchild.  
  
'Draco,' he exclaimed eagerly. 'You're back. Come and have a drink with me.'  
  
Draco watched the way his grandfather's hand trembled as he poured them both a Scotch. He was aging rapidly, his once-tall, ramrod-straight frame now spare and bent, his walk betraying the wariness of someone who had lost the security of being able to depend on his own physical strength.  
  
'Ginny's gone out shopping,' he told Draco. 'Why on earth do women need to make such a fuss about Christmas? You'd think Ginny was going to be feeding an army from the way she's been carrying on. She hasn't even had timet o change my library books for me this week,' he added with the petulant selfishness of the elderly. 'And she forgot to make my nightcap last night.  
  
'Come over here,' he instructed Draco abruptly. 'There's something I want to show you.'  
  
Frowning, Draco followed him, watching as he struggled with the lock on the drawer of his desk before removing a card, which he thrust in front of Draco.  
  
'It's from Lucien,' he told Draco tersely. 'It came yesterday. It's post- marked Jamaica.'  
  
'Jamaica.' Draco's frown deepened. The last they had heard of Lucien was that he was somewhere in Spain, but that had been more than a year ago, and despite all his own father in law's attempts to do so, he had not been able to trace the whereabouts of his twin brother.  
  
'I knew he wasn't in Spain, told Arthur so, too, but he wouldn't listen,' he could hear his grandfather complaining.  
  
'It's time he came home, Draco. I want him home. This is where his place is. This is where he would be if that damned woman hadn't driven him away.'  
  
It was no secret to Draco that his grandfather blamed, Victoria, nick named Vicky, Lucien's estranged wife, for his son's disappearance, claiming to anyone who would listen that it had been Victoria's unstable temperament and the eating disorder she suffered from, along with her dangerous mood swings and her extravagant life-style, that had prompted Lucien's near fatal heart attack and then caused him to disappear.  
  
Draco frowned as he studied the postcard his grandfather had handed him, not really paying much attention to what the older man was saying. After all, he had heard it all before, and if it had not been second nature to him to keep his grandfathers good side, he would have lost no time in cynically pointing out that there were far easier ways of removing an unwanted wife from one's life than to flee the country.  
  
Even so, he couldn't resist saying jibingly, 'Well, Uncle Lucien has nothing to fear from Vicky now that she's got a new man in her life.'  
  
'Exactly,' his grandfather pounced. 'I want Lucien found and I want him to come home before.' he stopped, wincing as he started to massage his aching hip.  
  
'Dad's already made several attempts to trace him,' Draco pointed out uninterestedly, 'and.'  
  
'Using detective agencies. Pah. useless. Arthur should fly out to Jamaica himself, and if he had any real brotherly love for Lucien. But then of course, he's always been jealous of Lucien and I.  
  
'I'd go myself if it wasn't for this damned hip,' he told Draco angrily. 'Damned if I wouldn't. I know Lucien. he's my son. my flesh. my blood.'  
  
Listening to him, Draco forbore to point out that so was his father in law, but then Bastian certainly did not know Arthur, and what he knew of Lucien was only what he had allowed himself to know. what he wanted to believe Lucien to be rather than what he actually was.  
  
Jamaica. Draco dropped the card onto the table, where it lay face up, white sands gleaming under an impossibly blue sky and an even bluer sea. Jamaica.  
  
His body suddenly stiffened.  
  
'If you really want someone to go and look for Uncle Lucien, I suppose I could fly out there and do a bit of checking up, look around.' he began, pseudo-hesitantly.  
  
'You!'  
  
The delight in the old man's voice might have touched the heart of any other man, but Draco refused to allow anything, anyone, to touch his, and he simply, instead, gave him a calculated smile.  
  
'But how can you?' his grandfather protested shakily. 'Your work.'  
  
Draco shrugged carelessly.  
  
'As it happens, things are pretty slack at the moment, and I have been thinking of taking a few weeks' leave. I may as well spend some of it in Jamaica as here under Ginny's feet.'  
  
'You mean you really would go, Draco?'  
  
Draco watched dispassionately as his grandfather fought to control his emotions, coming over him and grasping his shoulders as he blinked rapidly and told him huskily, 'I knew I could rely on you, Draco. You're your uncle Lucien all over again. He wants to come home, I know he does. Once he knows that that unhinged woman isn't going to make a nuisance of herself. My God, just let her try. She's already caused enough damage. When I think.'  
  
'It's going to be an expensive trip,' Draco warned him, ignoring his comments about Vicky. 'And.'  
  
'That doesn't matter,' his grandfather assured him.  
  
'Jamaica's a fair sized island, and there's no saying whereabouts Lucien might be,' Draco pointed out- or even if he would still be there, Draco acknowledged, but he kept that thought to himself. A few weeks in Jamaica at his grandfather's expense was exactly what he needed right now. Smiling to himself, he mentally thanked Harold. Who knew, he might even be able to pick up some potential new clients while he was out there.  
  
Finding Lucien was, of course, another matter entirely and not one he was inclined to give any serious thought to. After all, if his uncle genuinely wanted to return home, there was absolutely nothing to stop him from doing so.  
  
Silently he studied his grandfather. Did he really honestly believe what he was saying; that the only reason Lucien had left- disappeared- was because his marriage had broken down? Well, if so, it was no business of his to enlighten him, but the old man really must be losing his grip.  
  
'Draco, you don't know how much this means to me, my boy,' he heard Bastian telling him gruffly. 'I should have known I could rely on you. Your father in law.' He stopped and shook his head. 'It's always been a disappointment to me that Arthur doesn't. that he isn't.. he doesn't know how lucky he is to have a brother like Lucien,' he finished heavily. 'I lost my twin brother.'  
  
Draco looked impatiently at his watch.  
  
'Look Gramps,' he interrupted, cutting across the old man's all to familiar reminiscences, 'If I'm going to Jamaica, I should make a few phone calls. It's not going to be easy getting an international Apparition point at such short notice at this time of year. Half of Belgravia and Sloane Square will be flying out there on the first Apparition points out of Heathrow after the New Year, and then I'll have to get myself sorted out with a hotel.'  
  
Given the choice, Draco would have infinitely preferred to ignore the Christmas and New Year celebrations at Haslewich completely, of course, and taken the first flight he could to the Caribbean, but he knew that not even Ginny would wear that one.  
  
'Yes, yes of course,' his grandfather agreed.  
  
'And. I think we should keep this thing just between the two of us for now,' Draco told his grandfather smoothly. 'As you've said, Dad doesn't seem to be too keen on having Lucien home and.'  
  
'Yes. Yes, you're right,' his grandfather conceded.  
  
Draco smiled confidently at him. The old boy was amazingly easy to manipulate once you knew which buttons to press. The one marked 'Lucien' was always a dead cert. Contemptuously, Draco wondered why his own father in law didn't press it a little bit more often. There was no way that he, Draco, would allow the old man to patronize him and put him down, comparing him unfavourably to others the way Bastian did with Arthur. No way at all, and it irritated Draco that Arthur would do so. After all, his father could be stiff necked and stubborn enough when it suited him, and Draco already knew that the news that he was going to Jamaica to look for Lucien would not be received well in his parents' household- for a variety of reasons.  
  
The last thing Arthur would want was for Lucien to be found and encouraged to come home. Not because, as Bastian seemed so deluded to believe, Arthur was jealous of his twin. Draco knew that Arthur wouldn't welcome the complications and hassles that would arise with having Lucien and all the potential problems surrounding his fraudulent behaviour back on his doorstep.  
  
In his father in law's shoes, Draco knew that he would have lost no time at all in informing Bastian of just what his precious son had done. But, Arthur, to Draco's disgust, had gone to inordinate lengths to protect his father from discovering the truth about his favourite.  
  
Lucien wouldn't come back to Haslewich, of course, and Draco knew full well that it was extremely unlikely that he would even be able to find him- not that he intended to try very hard! A leisurely month or so relaxing in the sun was more the kind of thing he had in mind. He would pay some local agency to make a few general inquiries, of course, just to keep Gramps happy.  
  
He would wait until after Christmas to break the news to Ginny that he was going to Jamaica. That way, there was no risk of him coming under family pressure or disapproval and no risk either of his father or anyone else bending Bastian's ear to try to make him change his mind.  
  
*  
  
'Oh, Ginny, he looks so sweet.'  
  
Ginny turned to give Molly a rueful, watery smile before they both turned back towards the stage where Liam was giving his first public performance in the play school nativity play as one of the 'shepherds.'  
  
The sturdy house tame lamb, born late in the year and abandoned by her mother to be hand-reared in the kitchen of a local farm, decided that it was time she had some attention and playfully butted Liam.  
  
Manfully he grabbed hold of her collar commanding, with the same intonation he had heard his aunt Liv using to the pretty golden retriever puppy that was the latest addition to her household, 'Sit.'  
  
Even Bastian, seated at the other side of Molly, had given an appreciative bark of laughter, and as Molly told Ginny mirthfully later when the audience had stopped laughing, Liam had most definitely stolen the show.  
  
Draco, on Ginny's other side, gave his son a dispassionate, contemptuous look. The child irritated him. Surely he realized that sheep did not 'sit.'  
  
Liam was beginning to annoy Draco. The boy had actually dared to stand in the doorway to Draco and Ginny's bedroom the last time Draco had come home, glaring belligerently at him and refusing to allow Draco to enter.  
  
'Make him move,' he had told Ginny softly, without breaking eye contact with Liam, 'because if you don't.'  
  
When the parents went backstage to collect their offspring, it was Arthur whom Liam ran excitedly to once the play was over, flinging himself into his grandfather's arms and then burrowing his face in Arthur's neck as Arthur swung him up off the floor.  
  
There was something about one's grandchildren that made them so infinitely special and precious; Arthur acknowledged as he kissed the little boy and ruffled his hair.  
  
Arthur had no way of explaining to himself why it was so easy for him to love Liam, when it had been so hard for him to love and accept Draco. Liam was Draco's son; you couldn't look at him without knowing that. Physically he looked exactly as Draco had looked at the same age, but temperamentally, emotionally.  
  
It made Arthur's heart ache with compassion for Liam and anger against Draco, to see the way that Draco treated his son. It was no wonder that Liam now refused to go near him. Ginny was very loyal and never criticized Draco, but Arthur had seen the pain in her eyes as she watched Draco ignoring Liam, turning his back on him and deliberately showing the child how little he cared about him.  
  
Initially, when Liam had been born, Arthur had forced himself to stand back, to remind himself that he was Liam's grandfather and not his father, but then he had watched Charlie play with him, seen the bond growing between uncle and child, seen the way Draco was threatening to damage his son emotionally by rejecting him, and he had made himself a vow that for as long as Liam needed him in his life, he was going to be there for him.  
  
Arthur knew already, without knowing how he knew, that it would be Liam who one day would take his place in the family business, that Liam, like him, would be the Weasley who wanted to stay close to the place that had bred him, that Liam would be his kind of Weasley, just as Nathan had also been showing signs of wanting to come into the family firm.  
  
Nathan. Arthur started to frown slightly as he thought about his nephew. He had believed that Nathan was happy with them, that he had accepted his father's disappearance, but these last few months. Dumbledore had warned them that if Nathan's work did not improve, there was no way he was going to get the OWLS the needed to go onto tertiary education. Arthur had discussed the subject with Nathan, but far from being concerned, Nathan had merely told him truculently that he didn't care- that he'd changed his mind, that he didn't want to be a solicitor after all.  
  
'Then what do you want to be?' Arthur had asked him exasperatedly. It would be some years down the line before Nathan could possibly join the family practice so could not relieve the pressure that both he and Liv were experiencing currently with so many new cases coming into the Haslewich office. Liv had joined Arthur a few years before and now they were considering taking on a third partner because they were both having to work a lot of extra hours. But that particular route, bringing someone from outside the family, hadn't appealed to either of them. And as if work wasn't enough of a worry, Arthur and Molly were both concerned about Ginny and how she and the two children were being affected by the fact that Draco spent so little time with them.  
  
'She's such a lovely girl. She deserves so much better,' Molly had protested the last time they had discussed their daughter's marriage. 'I feel so helpless to do anything, though. Every time I try to raise the subject, she fobs me off. She's happy here in Haslewich, she says she likes looking after Gramps. She loves Queensmead, and there's no doubt that she's turned it into a proper home, but she's living the king of life that's more suited to some Victorian great-aunt than a young woman, and I'm afraid. It's so unfair, Arthur, she's got a lot to give. I know it's a dreadful thing to say, but I really wish that she could meet someone else, someone who would value her and love her.'  
  
That was as close either of them had come to acknowledging that Draco did not love his wife, but then, why discuss something that was so painfully obvious to everyone who witnessed it.  
  
If Ginny did ever decide to leave Draco and make a new life for herself, somewhere else, he would lose the special closeness he had with Liam, Arthur acknowledged, and he would hate that.  
  
'I love you, Arthur,' Liam whispered tremulously to him now, as though he had picked up on his grandfather's thoughts.  
  
Arthur hugged him. Just very occasionally when he was feeling especially emotional, Liam referred to him as 'Arthur.' The rest of the time he called him Grampy.  
  
On the other side of the room, where he had been deliberately flirting with the nursery class's pretty young teacher, Draco suddenly frowned as he watched the interlay between his son and his father.  
  
What was Arthur doing holding Liam like that, as though he was his child, and Liam, what was Liam doing looking as Arthur as though. Ignoring the pretty teacher's mock shy response to his sexual innuendo, Draco strode across the room, firmly taking hold of Liam and swinging down to the floor as he commanded curtly, 'Liam, stop acting like a baby.'  
  
The combination of being wrenched away from Arthur and the frightening presence of his father caused Liam to tense and scream protestingly in Draco's hold.  
  
'Go away, I don't like you,' he told Draco loudly, causing one or two of the near by parents to stare.  
  
Draco looked coldly at his son. No one was allowed to tell Draco that they didn't like him.  
  
'It's time Liam went him,' Draco told Ginny coldly over his shoulder. 'He's behaving badly.'  
  
Ginny shook her head urgently at Liam. There was to be a celebration tea for the children served in the hall just as soon as she and the other working helpers had got everything ready, and Ginny knew how much Liam had been looking forward to this treat. He had talked of it for days, and only yesterday he and Ginny had made special little caked for the party while he practised the three short sentences he had to say in the play.  
  
Ginny's heart ached for him as she saw the expression in his eyes as he watched his father.  
  
Another mother, another woman, would no doubt have coaxed and protested 'Draco. no. you know how much he's been looking forward to the party,' but Ginny knew that anything she might try to say or do to alleviate the situation would only make things worse. She could see from Draco's expression that there was no way he was going to back down, and she knew, too, that there was something in Draco that gave him pleasure in denying his child his enjoyment. She had no idea what it was that had warped Draco's character so badly and made him the man he was, nor, she suspected, did anyone else. He could not have better or more loving parents through Ginny. but Molly had intimated to her that Draco had always been a difficult child. some children were. of course his parents didn't help.  
  
'Take him away, Ginny,' Draco reiterated acidly.  
  
Heavy hearted, Ginny started to reach for her son, but before she could take him, Charlie suddenly appeared, coming between her and Draco, sweeping Liam up into his arms and tossing him playfully in the air before calmly walking away with him still in his arms, apparently unaware of the fact that Draco was commanding him to stop.  
  
'Oh, Draco, how lovely to see you. Ginny wasn't sure you were going to make it.'  
  
As she heard the purring voice of the town's most predatory bachelor, Ginny heaved a thankful sigh of relief, quickly making her own escape. Barbara would, no doubt, keep Draco engaged in conversation for as long as she could.  
  
In the room that had been set on one side for the party, Charlie was playing with Liam.  
  
Between them, Charlie and Arthur were supplying Liam with all the right kind of male role modelling any mother could want for her son, all the right kind of male values, so why, why, did she yearn for Draco to pick up his son and look at him with that same look of love and pride she could see in Arthur's eyes when he held his grandson?  
  
'Draco will never be able to love anyone else until he learns to love and accept himself,' Haramis had once told her, but for once Ginny had felt that the wise family matriarch had been wrong. Draco did love himself. Draco would always love himself- and never love anyone else?  
  
Quickly, Ginny went and picked up Jade, holding her tightly in her arms while she watched Liam playing with two of his small classmates.  
  
Ten minutes later, when she walked back into the other room, Draco had gone, and so, too, had Barabara Severn. 


	4. Chapter four

Chapter Four  
  
Draco waited until the rest of the family had dispersed after the Christmas celebrations before breaking the news to Ginny of his impending trip to Jamaica.  
  
'You're doing what? But my father has tried to find Lucien.'  
  
She paused in the act of picking up the children's discarded toys to push her hair out of her eyes and stare slightly myopically at Draco. She had put her glasses down somewhere and now she couldn't find them, and without them it was hard for her to read Draco's expression properly.  
  
'Correction,' Draco informed her laconically. ' What your father has done is to put in motion some half hearted inquires via a couple of low-key investigation companies. What Gramps wants me to do is to fly out to Jamaica to do some rather more muscular investigating.'  
  
'But Jamaica,' Ginny protested. 'I thought Lucien was supposed to be in Spain. What makes Gramps think that he's in Jamaica?'  
  
'Lucien sent him a card. He showed it to me and it's in Lucien's handwriting all right.'  
  
'But I don't understand,' Ginny protested. 'You're always saying how busy you are, how impossible it is for you to take time off.'  
  
'It's January. January can sometimes be relatively quiet, and it just so happens that I don't have any on going cases in hand. What are you trying to say Gin?' He taunted her softly.  
  
'Surely you don't think that I'm deliberately avoiding spending time with you. not when you're such a wonderful, stimulating and exciting. partner.'  
  
Ginny's face became suffused with uncomfortable color. She didn't need Draco underlining for her just how dull and boring he found her.  
  
'Does my. does my father know?' she asked him huskily.  
  
'Not so far as I know. Why should he? It isn't really any of his business is it?' he asked her coolly. 'Although no doubt it soon will be. You wont be losing any time running to your parents to tell them, will you, Ginny?'  
  
'Lucien is my father's brother,' Ginny reminded him quietly, swallowing hard on the pain lodging in her throat. 'My father is also concerned about the effect Lucien's absence is having on Gramps. and on Nathan too.'  
  
'So, no doubt he'll be delighted to hear that I'm going to try and find our missing black sheep, wont he,' Draco mocked her.  
  
'Grow up, Ginny,' he advised her grimly. 'If you're looking to your parents to put a veto on my going, your wasting your time. They don't have any more power to control my life then you do.'  
  
'If that's true, then why have you waited until now to mention the fact that you're going?' Ginny responded with unaccustomed sharpness.  
  
Draco gave a slow, cruel smile.  
  
'Oh, very good, very quick. I didn't say anything, my dear wife, because Gramps is bankrolling the trip and I didn't want your father getting any ideas about trying to persuade him to change his mind. Now its too late, my flight is booked and so is the hotel.'  
  
'Oh, Draco,' Ginny whispered, closing her eyes against the tears she could feel burning the back of her lids. She didn't know what hurt her most, Draco's obvious contempt for her or the fact that he could so callously and so openly admit to using their grandfather's desperate wish to see his son again to fund what both she and Draco knew was going to be an abortive trip. She doubted that Draco would even make the smallest attempt to find Lucien.  
  
'Oh Draco,' she whispered again under her breath as she heard him leaving the room.  
  
Angrily Nathan skimmed flat stones across the dull surface of Queensmead's small lake, gritting his teeth against the hot, bitter tears. He was a boy. a man almost. and men didn't cry, not even when.  
  
He had come over to Queensmead to see Ginny, but she had been out when he had arrived, and as he walked past his grandfather's library he had noticed that the door was open and that the old man was lying asleep in his chair.  
  
With no particular purpose in mind he had walked into the room. While he wasn't afraid of his grandfather, Nathan couldn't honestly say that he particularly liked him.  
  
'He's still hurting because of Uncle Lucien,' Charlie had once told him wisely when Nathan had complained that their grandfather never seemed to have much time for them. 'He's afraid of letting himself love us.'  
  
'He loves Draco,' Nathan had pointed out.  
  
'He loves Draco because Draco is the nearest thing he's got to Lucien, and loves Lucien because Lucien is the first-born o his twin sons, like the brother he himself lost.'  
  
'What do you think of my father?' Nathan had asked his cousin quietly.  
  
Charlie hadn't answered him for a while, and when he had, he hadn't been quite able to look Nathan in the eyes as he told him, 'I cant remember all that much about him. He was always working and.'  
  
'I'll bet you're glad that he wasn't your father, aren't you?' Nathan had demanded bitterly, abandoning the pretence of wanting or needing to know Charlie's opinion.  
  
'He's my uncle,' Charlie had reminded Nathan quietly, trying to pretend not to understand. 'I share his blood, his genes, almost as much as you do, Nathan. It's the same for me as it is for you.'  
  
'No, its not,' Nathan had retorted savagely. 'It's not the same for you. For a start, Grandfather doesn't. he doesn't like me, Charlie. I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He blames me because of Dad.'  
  
'No, he doesn't,' Charlie had objected. 'How can he? We all know the reason why Uncle Lucien.'  
  
He had stopped there, and Nathan hadn't continued to argue with him. What was the point?  
  
He had lost count of the number of times he had gone over that final row between his parents, that furious, pressured, trapped sentence his father had flung at his mother before they had left for the party to celebrate Lucien and Arthur's fiftieth birthday.  
  
'For God's sake, Vicky, will you listen,' his father had shouted furiously. 'Bloody kids, I never realized they were so expensive!'  
  
'Lucien, don't be ridiculous,' Vicky had snapped back. 'Nathan has to have a new school uniform. He's completely outgrown his old one. You're just going to have to find the money from somewhere. he cant go to school otherwise.'  
  
They had still been arguing when Nathan had crept past them to go to his own room.  
  
His parents. Why did they have to be the way they were?  
  
Why couldn't they be like other people's parents, or even better, like his uncle Arthur and aunt Molly?  
  
Just thinking about his aunt and uncle made him feel both better and worse. Just knowing they were in his life made him feel safe, and yet, at the same time, he experienced guilt for needing to have them there to make him feel safe. guilt and disloyalty.  
  
A duck squawked protesting and took flight from the lake, momentarily bringing Nathan's thoughts back to the present.  
  
As he had walked into the library he must have disturbed his grandfather, who had suddenly woken up, glaring belligerently as he saw Nathan.  
  
'Oh, its you, is it?' he had muttered. 'My God, with that mother of yours, its no wonder Lucien doesn't want to come home.' He had reached up and picked up a postcard that was lying on his desk, his fingers trembling as he touched it. 'This is what your father is reduced to because of her,' Bastian had told him bitterly. 'Living like some native in a place.'  
  
His mother's fault- and his? Was that what Bastian was trying to say?  
  
Instinctively Nathan had picked up the postcard his grandfather had flung down, his eyes luring as he tried to focus on his father's handwriting- handwriting he couldn't really recognize or relate to, and even though he brushed his thumb over the brief message, as though hoping to somehow or other absorb something of the man who had written it, something of the man who was his father, he could feel absolutely nothing, just an intensifying of the deep-rooted sense of pain and anger he always felt when he thought of him.  
  
What kind of man was his father, what kind of man would he himself become, what kind of a father? Not one like Arthur.  
  
Savagely Nathan flung another flat stone skimming over the dull, still water. His uncle Arthur would never walk out on his family, his children. His uncle, Arthur. Grimly he remembered how at Christmas when they had all exchanged gifts to one another, his uncle had reached for him, hugging him warmly, hugging him before he turned to Charlie, but Nathan had seen the look in his eyes when he did hug Charlie, had seen it and known that it was the look of a father for a dearly loved child. His uncle Arthur loved him, housed him, cared for him out of a sense of duty and responsibility, out of his general and characteristic love for all of mankind, but he loved Charlie very differently. He loved Charlie as a man loves his son. What was it he, Nathan, had done that had caused that lack of love from his father? There were so many questions he needed to ask him, so much he needed to know.  
  
In walking away from him, disappearing, his father had cheated him of the right to ask those questions, and Nathan felt that he couldn't get on with his life, couldn't move forward until they were answered.  
  
He knew how concerned his aunt and uncle were about his schoolwork, but how could he explain to them, how could he tell them how alienated he suddenly felt from them, how afraid and alone?  
  
His grandfather was fond of repeating stories about Nathan's own father's teenage years, the sportsman he had been, the scholar, and hinted at, but never openly declared, his sexual skills and exploits. His father, according to his grandfather, had been a man to admire and emulate, but to Nathan he was little more then a flat cardboard figure without flesh and meaning, a vague shadow, a dim memory, someone with whom he had no sense of shared history or shared blood, someone who ha fathered him but who had then walked away.  
  
Nathan reached for another pebble. It had started to rain, a thin, fine, penetrating drizzle, and he didn't have a coat, but Nathan didn't care, just as he didn't care that by rights he ought to be at home studying. Why should he care? Who cared for him? Not his father. No, never him.  
  
'Ginny have you got five minutes to spare?'  
  
Ginny smiled briefly at her mother as Molly popped her head around the kitchen door. It was eleven o'clock in the morning and she had just settled Gramps down with a cup of coffee and some of her homemade biscuits. Liam had gone for a walk with Charlie, his chest swelling with pride when Charlie had gravely invited him, and she had driven over to Liv's earlier in the morning to drop Jade off there to play with Amelia and Alex.  
  
As for Draco's where abouts! Ginny's smile faltered. He had gone out immediately after breakfast, saying that he needed to go into Chester to finalize the details of his trip to Jamaica.  
  
'I've come to ask you a favor,' Molly began, sitting down opposite Ginny at the kitchen table as she accepted her offer of a coffee.  
  
'I know how busy you are with Gramps and the children, but with Ruth deciding to spend the next six months in America with her family and all the extra work we're going to have with the Mums and Babes home now that we've finally got the go-ahead on out new property, I was wondering, well hoping, that I could persuade you to take on a more formal role with the charity. You've been wonderful at helping out with the fund raising and taking a lot of the paperwork of Ruth's and my shoulders, but what I'd like to ask you is if you would consider taking over Ruth's role as the charity's treasurer.'  
  
Ginny stared at her.  
  
'You want me to do that, but.'  
  
'Please don't say no,' Molly begged her. 'Ruth and I talked the whole thing over before she went away, and we had hoped to get an opportunity to talk to you together, but what with the wedding and Christmas. Ruth and I are in perfect agreement about this, Ginny. You'd be perfect for the job. You're a whiz with figures, and when it comes to organizational flair.'  
  
Molly shook her head and laughed.  
  
'You're talents are wasted on us, Ginny, you should be heading some multimillion-galleon organization.'  
  
Ginny stared at her and blushed, her glance not quite meeting her mother in law's as she told her quietly, 'it's very flattering of you to think of me, and to go to so much trouble to boost my ego,' she added wryly, 'but flattering though.'  
  
'I'm not flattering you, Ginny,' Molly interrupted her firmly. 'What I've said is no less than the truth. Arthur was commenting only the other day that he'd give anything to have an office manager with your skills. You have a very special gift; my dear,' she told her daughter gently, 'and I don't just mean your gift with people. Bill complained the other week that maths is supposed to be one of his strengths, and yet you are far quicker mathematically than he is himself.'  
  
Ginny gave a small, self-conscious shrug. 'Its just one of those odd quirks,' she protested uncomfortably. 'I.'  
  
'Ginny, I could shake you,' Molly told her mock angrily.  
  
'You're always putting yourself down, but let me tell you, if you think that I'm asking you to take Ruth's place as the charity treasurer and secretary out of some kind of misguided altruism, you couldn't be more wrong. I. the charity desperately needs you and your skills. Our accountants have already warned me that I must find someone to take over Ruth's role, and Ruth herself has hinted that she would like you to take over permanently if you can be persuaded to do so.'  
  
'But the charity is Ruth,' Ginny pointed out.  
  
'Of course,' Molly agreed. 'It was Ruth's experience of being an unmarried mother and having to part with her baby that led to her establishing our first mother and baby home, and as you know I had my reasons for becoming involved.'  
  
Gravely Ginny nodded her head. Harry, Molly's first baby, had died shortly after his birth. To lose a child would, Ginny knew, but the ultimate tragedy. She loved her two with a fierce maternal love that made even the direst and most miserable times of her marriage worthwhile, as it was her marriage that had given them life. But these were emotions too close to her heart for her ever to be able to discuss them with anyone, even someone as sympathetic as Molly.  
  
In truth she could think of no causer she would rather be involved in than Ruth and Molly's mother and baby homes, and it was true that she did have a quiet, calm way of establishing order out of chaos. But if she made such a commitment, she would want.  
  
Molly watched the expressions chasing on another over her daughter's face and saw the quiet, despairing sadness shadowing her eyes, and she immediately knew its cause.  
  
'Has Draco gone back to London?' she asked Ginny.  
  
'No. no, he hasn't.'  
  
Refusing to look at her, Ginny got up and collected their empty coffee cups.  
  
'Ginny, what is it? What's wrong?' Molly asked her insistently.  
  
'Nothing.nothing's wrong,' Ginny fibbed.  
  
'It's Draco, isn't it?' Molly guessed. 'What.'  
  
'No, not really,' Ginny denied, and then admitted, 'well yes it is. but its not. he's going to Jamaica to look for Lucien.'  
  
Molly stared at her. Of all the things she had expected to hear, this had quite definitely not been one of them. An affair- not the first for Draco and very likely not the last- an admission that her marriage had not turned out the way she had hoped, those she had fully expected and been prepared for, but this.  
  
'He's doing what? But. How? Why? He can't. What about his work.?' Molly asked, thoroughly bewildered.  
  
'Apparently it's all arranged,' Ginny told her quietly.  
  
'Gramps has asked him to go and since. since Draco is having a quiet period at work at the moment, he decided, he felt. He knows how much Gramps is missing Lucien, and Draco seems to think that it shouldn't be too difficult to track him down if he is in Jamaica.'  
  
Molly started to frown, her shock giving in to a mixture of anger and unease. Draco would never agree to put himself out to such an extent simply out of concern for his grandfather. Molly felt her heart start to sink. What was Draco up to? She knew all about the card that Bastian had received from Lucien, post-marked Kingston, but anyone could have posted that for him, and even if he had actually been on the island, Lucien could be anywhere by now.  
  
Draco knew as well as they all did that there was nothing to stop Lucien from making proper contact with his family if he wished to do so. It was cruel of him to encourage Bastian in his false hopes, his false beliefs that Lucien was a victim of unkind circumstances, isolated from his family by fate instead of by his own choice. There was no point in suggesting to Ginny that she might try to prevail upon Draco not to go. As Draco's mother in law and godmother, Molly knew perfectly well that Draco listened to no one, heeded no one, cared for no one, other than himself.  
  
She could still vividly remember finding Draco in the graveyard one afternoon, the plants she had so carefully tended around Harry's grave all ruthlessly ripped out of the earth, their petals crushed and dying. When she had finally managed to fight back her tears to as Draco why he had destroyed them, he had simply shrugged his shoulders.  
  
'They aren't doing any good,' he told her callously. 'He.' He had aimed a kick in the direction of Harry's gravestone. 'He's dead anyway.'  
  
'I just feel that I can't relate to him at all,' Molly had told Arthur through her anguished tears later.  
  
'Why. why do something like that. something so. so senseless and destructive? He knows how much Harry's grave means to me.'  
  
'Perhaps that's why he did it,' Arthur had suggested. 'Perhaps he feels jealous.'  
  
'Of Harry?' Molly protested. 'How could he? He never even knew.'  
  
Grimly she closed her eyes. How could she say even to Arthur that she didn't love her own godson and now son in law, and anyway it wasn't true. She did love him, but the things he did, the way he was, no those she could not love.  
  
'Liam is starting to become very.' Ginny paused and swallowed. 'He's very difficult when Draco's around and I. I feel that Liam needs Draco to be here at home for him. to spend more time with him, But Draco.'  
  
'Oh, Ginny,' Molly sympathized sadly. 'I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry.'  
  
Ginny gave her a wan smile.  
  
'Can I think about the Mums and Babes thing and let you know?'  
  
'Just as long as you say yes,' Molly conceded. 'We really do need you Ginny.'  
  
'You're looking very pensive,' Arthur commented to his wife as he walked into the sitting room and saw her standing, staring through the window obviously deep in thought. 'Did you see Ginny?'  
  
'Mmm.' Molly agreed.  
  
'So what's wrong? Has she refused to held you by taking Ruth's place?'  
  
Molly shook her head, interrupting him. 'It's not Ginny, its Draco. Ginny was in a bit of a state when I got there, and it turns out that Draco is planning to fly to Jamaica to look for Lucien.'  
  
'He's what?'  
  
'Yes, I know,' Molly acknowledged wryly, correctly reading her husbands expression. 'I was as stunned as you. I mean, Draco has never shown the remotest interest in Lucien's whereabouts, and I doubt very much. According to Ginny he's doing it to please Gramps, who, by the way, is apparently underwriting the whole trip.' Molly looked across at her husband and recognized his concern.  
  
'According to Ginny, Draco is flying out to Kingston the day after tomorrow and.' She stopped, frowning, asking Arthur, 'what was that? I thought I heard someone outside the door.'  
  
Arthur crossed the room and fully opened the sitting room door, which he had left slightly ajar.  
  
'There's no one there,' he told Molly. 'It was probably one of the gnomes.'  
  
'Arthur, what are we going to do about this?'  
  
'I suspect there isn't anything we can do other than register our disapproval,' Arthur told her quietly. 'You know Draco.'  
  
'What about Nathan?'  
  
'I don't know,' Molly sighed. 'He seemed so happy with us, but just lately. I hate to pry, but I've actually asked Charlie if he. They've always been close, but while they haven't fallen out, they're tending to spend more and more time apart these days. All Charlie can say is that Nathan talks a lot about his father and that he seems very angry with Lucien.'  
  
Ginny turned her car in through the gates to Queensmead after paying a visit to Liv, fiercely blinking away the evidence of the tears that had been threatening her all day.  
  
As she dropped the car down a gear to avoid the pot-holes the winter rain had left in the driveway- Draco had complained furiously about the state of the drive and the damage it could potentially do to his expensive new car- Ginny bit worriedly at the corner of her mouth, a habit she had developed as a small child and one she had never entirely grown out of. It often left her mouth with a soft bee-stung look about it that had made Draco tell her tauntingly one, when he had not visited Queensmead for almost six weeks, that if he hadn't known better he might have thought she had been enjoying the attentions of a lover.  
  
There was one aspect of Draco's trip to Jamaica that, as yet, no one other than her seemed to have picked up on, and she devoutly hoped that they would not.  
  
She knew enough about her husband's business to acknowledge that the months of January and February could often be quite slow, but for him to claim that he had no work pending and that he could take what amounted to at least two months off, indicated to Ginny that there could be some other and rather more sinister reason for Draco's absence from his chambers.  
  
She stopped the car and turned to smile at her children.  
  
Draco was not popular with the mother members of the chambers, she already knew that, but there was also no question about the fact that he was a highly skilled and very successful divorce Auror, who acquired by reputation, the very cream of the country's divorce cases.  
  
Ginny was by no means lacking in intelligence, she had also trained in law, although she had never practiced, because she had chosen to bring up her children. Despite what Draco and to some degree her own family chose to think, she was very much afraid that Draco's decision to take a couple of months' leave was not as voluntary as he wanted others to believe.  
  
Ginny knew that both she and the children were secure enough; financially- she had her trust fund. But it was not her financial future that was causing her to feel such concern, it was.  
  
'Ginny, where the hell have you been?'  
  
She tensed as Draco suddenly materialized beside the car, wrenching open the drivers door as he glared angrily at her.  
  
'I've got to go out this evening, and the old man's complaining again that you haven't changed his library books. There's all my packing to be done as well.'  
  
'I've got Gramps' new library books with me,' Ginny told him pacifically as she reached into the back of the car for the children while Draco stood and watched, without making any attempt to give her assistance.  
  
It would never have occurred to her to ask for his help, and, anyway, Liam, now that he had caught sight of his father, was already stiffening in her arms, his body tense with rejection and fear.  
  
It worried her that Liam was so antagonistic towards his father, but he was too young yet for her to be able to explain to him that Draco's indifference towards him, which she suspected was the cause of Liam's feelings, had nothing to do with Liam himself and was simply the way that Draco felt towards anyone whom he considered unimportant or not worthy of his time or attention.  
  
She had realized very early on in her marriage how little she meant to Draco, and had long ago stopped being hurt by his lack of love and respect for her, or so she told herself. Jade had been conceived without any of the emotions she herself had once considered essential between two people who were creating a new life.  
  
Ginny smiled painfully to herself as she lifted her small daughter out of the car. Thankfully, Jade herself had no notion and never would have if she could help it, of the empty, banal, cynically selfish act that had led to her procreation.  
  
'Why don't you go to a prostitute?' Ginny had hissed tearfully at Draco when he had walked into their bedroom late one night, deliberately waking her up by slamming the door and then proceeding to switch on the lights and yank back the bed clothes. She had been wearing a nightdress, a habit she had developed during the long nights she had spent alone. Draco had smiled cruelly at her as he dropped onto the bed beside her, naked and plainly ready for se.  
  
'Don't bother taking it off,' he had advised her tauntingly. 'I don't want to look at you. Anyway,' he had said as he pushed her night dress aside, ignoring the tense hostility of her motionless body and the pain in her eyes, 'why should I pay someone else when I've got you here. After all, one- ' he had then proceeded to use a phrase that had seared Ginny's emotions, sickening and humiliating her as he concluded '- is much the same as any other and gives the same degree of release.'  
  
'If that's all you want, you should.' Ginny had shot back only to stop, her face flushing with mortification as she saw the white glint of his teeth as he laughed at her.  
  
'I should what? Go and take care of myself in the bathroom like some adolescent..? Oh, no.' he had advised her calmly, his hands touching her, arousing her physically, even though emotionally she hated herself for being so responsive to him. As he entered her, Ginny wondered why he was with her. Was the reason he was with her now, the reason he needed her, because whomever he had been with whomever he had been expecting to spend the night with had, for some reason or another, turned him down? It had been out of that; out of his usage of her body to assuage the physical desire he had felt for another woman, that she had conceived their second child.  
  
That time, when Draco had tightened his lips and looked calculating at her as he told her he did not want a second child any more than he had wanted a first, she had ignored the way she was shaking with nerves inside and had told him quietly, 'Perhaps you should have thought of the consequences before having sex with me, although I should imagine it would be rather more embarrassing for you if the woman whom you had expected to have sex with that night was standing her instead of me, telling you that she'd conceived your child.'  
  
Draco, of course, hadn't been in the least bit fazed nor repentant. He had simply shrugged his shoulders and told her dismissively, 'with her, the situation wouldn't have arisen because she would have taken good care to make sure there was no. problem. You see, unlike you, my dear, she enjoys sex, and she knows how to make sure her partner enjoys it as well.'  
  
In some ways her daughter was even more precious to her because she knew that she had been conceived only by chance, Ginny acknowledged as she kissed Jade's plump face before shepherding both children towards the house. 


	5. Family Tree

Draco's Side of the Family:  
  
Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy (His parents)  
  
Arthur and Molly Weasley (His godparents, which explains why the Weasley's accept Draco into their family.)  
  
Ginny's Side of the Family:  
  
Bastian Weasley (Arthur's father)  
  
Arthur and Molly Weasley (Her parents)  
  
Percy and Marion Weasley (Her brother and sister in law)  
  
Bill and Fleur Weasley (Her brother and sister in law)  
  
Charlie (single)  
  
Ron and Hermione Weasley  
  
Fred and ?  
  
George and ?  
  
Draco and Ginny Malfoy  
  
Liam and Jade Malfoy  
  
Lucien (Arthur's twin) and Victoria a.k.a. Vicky (ex-wife,)  
  
Nathan Weasley  
  
Olivia (Liv) and Sherlock Weston  
  
Alec and Austion Weston  
  
Hasbreth Weasley  
  
Fenwick Weasley  
  
Jasper Weasley (Bastian's twin, and Arthur's uncle)  
  
Jai and Saya Weasley  
  
Quinn, Merry, Robin and Brianna Weasley  
  
Germana (Arthur's aunt and Jasper and Bastian's sister) married Howard (whose daughter is Severine Delacour, grand daughters are Fleur Weasley and Gabrielle Delacour)  
  
AN- I know this isn't exactly a tree, but it serves the same purpose. The names closest to the left are the older generations and towards the right are the younger generations. Hope this helps! 


End file.
